Well, if drama is exciting and civility is boring so be it. There is no shortage of drama on the Internet to be excited by. I like it here the way it is.

Besides, even in a community that gets on well there is inevitably some drama from time to time to spice things up I guess. We've had some lately but I'll just leave those sleeping dogs lie.

Actually nobody needed to stick their necks out in the old days, you all bloody agreed with each other and it sucked. There is far more diversity here now and this forum is a better place for it.

speaking of agitating...
I saw an article today that says in The U.K. last night some poor guy was beaten sensless by two people dressed as Oompa Loompas.

I have to hand it to the English. We Americans may be more sadistic with our crime, but you English are by far more dramatic.

Wait, so being courteous, accepting, and mature is now a bad thing?

RIGHT! Courteous has left the building!

Who the $"(% downrated his post, and WHY? I really get pissed off with our voting system, it's not meant to be criticism of content. It's meant to be indication of invalid content, i.e. spam, or really off topic crap.

This was a valid post, if you downvoted it I challenge you to post why you did it. In fact I think that should be a requirement for downvoting.

EDIT: Swearing removed.

I try to avoid conflict these days. Not because I'm afraid of it, or because I really care what the other person thinks, I just tend to get a little too worked up. And then after I've raged, I'll have a depressive slide, and feel miserable. So is it really worth it when I can just walk away with light anxiety?

The fact is the issues most people argue about on these forums are parts of themselves. Piracy, morals, what have you. No matter the arguing, or flaming, or whatever will change their point of view. I could sit here and argue with someone like Stingingvelvet about morality and stealing for pages upon pages (I have in the past) but what's the point? He has his views, I have mine. And neither of our viewpoints are going to change.

You shouldn't have name dropped there. Prepare for a long argument about how he's totally able to change his views :).

Seriously though, I agree, I think most people on the net are getting bored of arguing. Perhaps it was just something we needed to get out of our system.

And yes, I get the irony of my previous post... I've not got it quite out of my system yet.

My washing machine has an agitator. That help?

Haven't read the whole 9 yards of this thread (sorry, limited time), but if you really wanted to know the epitome of niceness you should have visited doom9.org few years back.

I don't know how things are now, has been many years since I stopped visiting, but back then the politeness and correctness of that forum was stifling. And not only by community reprimand either.

Well of knowledge of all things video and all that, but by the gods, it was like a minefield on personal expression.

In comparisson GOG forums are heavan. Or, should I put it, a nice balance of freedom of speech and lack of general dickery. Lurv it.

How do you explain the Plus button?

Good thread, good place, but piss poor use of the plus and minus keys at times.

Rarely use them, but never over a disagreement. Spam, or very rarely, if someone just goes out of their way to attack someone personally, for no good reason (not their ideas, but them personally,) or if a particular argument was well thought out or constructed.

It is like when I used to "collide" with my father. We'd disagree, but didn't hate each other, as each respected the other's right to their position.

I don't, GOG do. It's for posts that add something of value to the community. Such as a bug fix, or a link to a solution to a problem. I'd hunt around for the thread where it was stated, but I can't be bothered, so downvote or upvote as you see fit.

Minus - This is absolutely unacceptable.
Plus - This is very acceptable. Please have my babies.

I'm clicking it! but it does nothing :(

I must say I don't see a point in "needing" agitators.

I see the point of dullness (although I personally don't see these forums as dull), but I don't agree that agitators and heated arguments are the way to go.

And I definitely don't think we need "arseholes" for anything -- situations where expressing your opinion regardless of others' feelings is required are practically nonexistent. I tend to see that people who propose this are on the long run arseholes themselves, excluding you because I only know you by this topic which is hardly cause enough for such judgement. These people tend to think of all arguments as conflicts through which they would raise their social status, and regard absolutely stupid things as marks of strength and victory (like making someone cry by putting your opinions in a coarse form that they know offends them)

Enough about a-holes and arguments in general, though, that certainly isn't the main point, although it clearly got me worked up the most.

The only problem with the general politeness and nice atmosphere is that we might turn into an elitist community that just revels in it's gloriousness and hates all "lesser" communities, which is why I've tried to avoid even the Steam related topics (with moderate success). Then we'd get overrun by trolls and turn into a bitterly elitist camp of inbred... Well, arseholes again. It is some kind of a vicious circle, it seems.

Why this all is worrisome is that this topic, in a manner, may be a herald of those troll hordes (not saying you are a troll, but a foreshadowing of possible trolls, and all this with absolutely no offense, you merely triggered the chain of thought).

What I mean is, that even though I don't agree with the points you made, I agree that self-reflection and judgement is acceptable.

Being a part of this community won't make anyone a better person, no matter what the community is like. Quite the opposite, we make the community alike ourselves. Thus far it has been nice to be a part of this, and I hope it will remain so.

To top it: I don't see why we would need agitators and more heat if we seem perfectly content with the situation as it is. I've not seen any bashing of newcomers either (being a rather late arrival myself, I've been welcomed into the community pretty well).