Dimitris
Posts: 13282
Joined: 7/31/2005
Status: offline
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Hi YorkieSand,
The point that such arguments drive away players has been expressed before and addressed here. A bit of elaboration might be helpful.
Like you, most of us would like all of this to just go away and disappear. We would also like world peace everywhere, poverty to cease to exist, free oil that produces zero emissions and so on and so on. Point here being that wishing for something is nice and all; actually managing to make it happen is a bit more complicated and involved.
Bickering among producers of content/material is nothing new. Look in any creative profession and you'll easily see disagreements that all too often spawn into full-fledged clan wars (sound familiar?). Look in any major game online community (take your pick) and you'll see people arguing, sometimes over miniscule details. In fact, it could be argued that the creative differences between competing teams are often the primary driving factor behind the evolution & improvement of the discipline at hand. Show me an art or science where there is no dissenting opinion about the state of things and I'll show you a stale profession with no passion or little incentive for innovation and improvement.
The question, then, is not whether the existence of disagreement and differing opinions within the Harpoon community is a harmful element. The real question is: which factors feed from this dissent and transform it into the vile material you have observed in other forums, and now in this forum as well (thankfully in limited form so far).
In my opinion, the "positive disagreement" process goes south the moment that even one single person (with or without the encouragement of others) considers that his current benign methods of argument are insufficient to advance his line of reasoning, and decides to step into the dirty tricks territory to further his goals. At this point, things like multiple forum aliases and sockpuppet profiles, DOS attacks & forum hack raids, forum bans "for who you are, rather than what you've done", software theft, incessent forum spamming, picking on other people's work, copying other people's work without permission or due credit, thread hijacking, outright lying etc. etc. all become fair game. This is the point where the vile material is generated and the previously good-natured disagreement can turn into something really ugly.
Bear in mind that the people who turn to this sort of methods usually go to great lengths to appear as the community's champions. After all, popularity is one of the main reasons (if not the sole reason) they got into the game in the fist place. You will often see them appear right away to help a newbie question (sometimes the immediacy of their response precludes them from providing actually useful help). You will see them trying to generate mountains out of molehills (e.g. conjuring non-existent bugs etc.) so that they can show themselves off. You will see them sporting huge advertising material for their sites. You will see them freely copying ideas & concepts from other people at will.
Also, have no doubt that these people love it when someone posts something along the lines of "Stop it, all of you! Stop bickering and just make good stuff! Grow up already!". To them, it reads like a community admonishment of the justified reaction from other members, and a quasi-legitimizing of their methods. Little do they realise that the community decries not the reaction alone, but rather the entire created mess - and guess who's responsible for the mess to begin with?
So, what CAN actually be done about it? Like I said before, the disagreements themselves are not going away anytime soon, and it can be argued that they _should not_ go away. What CAN be done is to contain, to the maximum extent possible, the elements that turn the constructive dissent into a destructive potshot warzone. Contributing positively without much fanfare and worry about one's self-image is a good start for this, and I think you can easily observe which community members are following this line. Another way is to avoid feeding the trolls - and let me be the first to admit to yielding to the temptation to respond now and then. Above all, recognising the dirty tricks is the most important element. Seeing is avoiding; avoid rewarding the jackheads and the futility of their tricks will, even slowly, catch up with them.
The community has a pretty good view of who the bad apples are. It's just a matter of collectively showing them the door.
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