I've just come back from a weeks holiday and was underwhelmingly unsurprised to find yet more snipes, put downs, cheap shots, racist comments, and an abundance of pots and kettles.    We all know that this forum has a problem, but as I find myself wanting to participate more I'm finding it increasingly difficult to know how to handle it.

One of the things I find most uncomfortable with is the way it gets either ignored or dealt with by sniping comments. I have a big problem with ignoring bullying, because ignoring it makes it worse. Yet I've seen many attitudes such as 'grow a thicker skin', 'it's worse elsewhere', 'just leave it, s/he doesn't care', and 'calling you an idiot was a valid point, who the %£$* are you telling me to stop'. I find these unacceptable. It's not the victims fault if they don't see the funny-side of their head being flushed. Just because something is worse elsewhere does not justify us accepting such low standards. The problem is what to do.

Obviously, the best solution to problems like this is for some sort of policing by the authorities (e.g. moderation). However, this is out of our control and shows little sign of actually happening, so is there anything that we can actually do about it ourselves?

Maybe... calling someone out with a standard statement - e.g. "[Quote] racist / derogatory / bullying comment". Obviously, this only works if several people call out each and every case leading to a (hopefully) short term spamming of threads. Or is this just a disaster in the making?

I don't know. What do you think?

Stuart

P.S. There are oft-made comments about users being driven away or not posting because of the current state of things. My suspicion is that this is true, but I think it would be very enlightening to see if it really is the case, so I started this poll to see what happened.

The attitude of the forum is one reason I have not upgraded.

It is not just one or two users but a general attitude however there is one user (plus his trusty sidekick) that seems to be the in the middle of every fight (with the exception of the HD threads of course).

Should Invelos do something about one person who seemingly wants to dominate every thread insisting he is the final authority on everyting DVD Profiler related? That is not my call nor would I even suggest it.

Would this forum be a friendlier place if the one voice were put in it's place by an actual company representative (and not a wannabe one)? Based on my experiences with other forums I would have to say, yes.

I tend not to post as often as i do in other forums because of the general attitude in these forums i recently had a dialogue with someone who took an aggressive and disrespectful tone in there replies to me and even though this was the first time we had ever conversed felt they had the right to insult me.

I don't know about racist comments or bullying, but there are some users that do have a strong opinions in certain areas. Maybe some words of choice should/could be better, but I don't think it is being said to actually 'hurt' someone. If we turn this way there is always something to find one might find racist,  being bullied or anything else.
In the time I have been online, and that has been some time, there are always differences between persons/groups on forums. I have been mod on a car forum and there were/are groups with different opinions on almost everything. Sometimes this ended in name calling, but when we met on certain occassions everyone could just talk on a normal level, and there were both Dutch as well as Belgium and German members, and the occasional person from a few other European countries, and Great Britain, I read in some post we cannot call them European because it would be most likely I could get hit in the head

To end my post...

'sticks and stones....'

I will never apologize because I might hold a strongly held opinion. If you don't like it that is simply tough. I find MOST of the arguments presented here to be not based on anything logical or data-oriented. Between my wife and myself we have some 45 years of experience in designing databases, I have a very high degree of confidence in my work and hers, and I think we KNOW what we are talking about. This may result in people not getting answers that they WANT to hear and again I apologize but I will call it like I see it and if you can't deal with that...too bad. I only deal with data, and sometimes data gives answers that I might not be personally pleased with, but there is no room for what I am personally pleased with, there is only room for the direction the data leads, my personal opinions as I keep telling everybody belong ONLY in my Local database where I write Rules to suit me, the Online does NOT have to mirror my preferences and does not, I see many users trying to get the Online to do just that, mirror what THEY wnat it to do, sometimes hiding behind a majority opinion which may or may not have any validity.

Skip

@Skip,
no one in this forum would ever expect you to apologise for having a strongly held opinion. They may disagree with it, but that's all.
However, it's the way you (and others, this isn't just about you) express those opinions and about how you talk to those who disagree with you.
For example, in another thread just this evening you likened a French user to a member of the Vichy. Do you honestly know how offensive a lot of French people will have found that? In all honesty, how would you like it if we likened you to a member of the KKK, or more contemporary, to a member of Al-Qaeda?

Quoting AiAustria:

Quote:
And maybe users are blocked generally if they reach up to xx blocks from individual users...

Sorry, I wouldn't agree with that.  Even if many users don't like Joe Doe that doesn't necessarily mean JD should be blocked globally.

I'd like to see a "Report Bad Post" button. That could alert Invelos staff to something that needs their attention.