Old School Flame wars

[Shao Khan]

I was telling someone about the old Planet where nothing was sacred. We used to light each other at the drop of a hat. Ck was everywhere with several thousand posts, Ryst was a right evil bastard that while making a point would trash any noob on the site, I remember Kaf and his gun control stance and all the Canadians and tough chicks like Pixie and Wolf. Wheg and prodog where in full force and about a hundred other verbal badasses I can't remember thru the THC. I can remember their Av's but the names would have to be told to me again.
I grew up on that atmosphere. It was one of my first and most exciting sites. I got my share of bloody noses so to speak but I was still a nobody with a rotten mouth. Charlie called me vato sure but he moderated the recycle bin.

On that evil board I went off. So bad in fact they would report me and Cole would come in check it out and post a reply if he was ok with it. My content was offensive on purpose. Much to my surprise he had the unique ability to ignore adjectives and read the facts. Is why I am loyal o this day.

There was a lot of "Mod punching" and unacceptable behavior. in fact it's where I learned to be an unemotional "robo-mod" for later.

Anyone else from that era and remember anything of it? Ahh, the salad days...never laughed so hard in my life.
Fyi, SHAOKHAN means the laughing king. I'm not angry I'm baiting you.

[Cole]

Me to man

We had 20,000 users at one point... it was EPIC! I loved the BMP... it made me laugh and laugh and argue and argue.... was great! I curse and cuss more then anyone I know in RL, so that stuff don't bother me while reading. I ignore it unless it's where it doesn't belong. Hell they just proved people that swear allot have an average IQ 10pts above people that don't.

Anyway, yeah, I personally miss those days... but to be honest, that's what killed this site along with bad hosting from web-hosts in FLORIDA. I learned along time ago that if it's from Florida or hosted there it's gonna be a rip off or a con job.

Now that we have great hosting and virtually unlimited space etc, we don't have the users. I'm afraid most of our users jumped ship and went to Dragon's Foot or Wizard of the Coast < that later really pisses me off because I do everything for free and ask nothing in return, help everyone I can and spent years holding this site up with my own $$$, while WotC hordes money and never gives credit to sites like this one.

I'd love to get this site back to it's former glory, but I don't think that's possible anymore .... more and more people don't play RPGs anymore and the one's that do, avoid this site like the plague as memories of the BMP and Pal-Assassin wars haunt them

O'well, the people that are here are good folks, easy going and give opinions when asked. Less people mean WAYYYY less hassle for me. It is what it is

[Stik]

Those old school flame wars gave this site a bad name, and drove a lot of good people away. I can do without them.

I never object to someone disagreeing with me, but there's rarely a need to be nasty.


I found this video (click the link below) to contain a lot of useful info (and there's a transcript below, for those who can't watch the video):

How To Behave On An Internet Forum

Internet forums are either a brilliant community where you can meet and chat with new, interesting people, or full of scornful idiots who deserve to be banned from The Net in its entirety. This film explains some of the common mistakes people make in forums, which makes them the sort of loathsome fool no one wants to know.


Step 1: Flame Wars

By-and-large, the trouble with The Internet, and forums in particular, is that everyone gets to be anonymous. That essentially gives them free reign to be as snooty and argumentative as they like.

A ‘troll' posts deliberately controversial or annoying messages for the specific purpose of getting a rise out of people and initiating a hate-filled and overly-argumentative thread. The appropriate course of action is simply not to respond. Don't feed the troll.

Step 2: Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law states that “as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

What that means in real terms is that sooner or later someone involved in a forum argument will be likened to a Nazi, or displaying Hitler-like tendencies. Please note that if you're the one invoking Godwin's Law and likening someone to a Nazi, you've immediately lost the argument because it's such a lame-a** low blow.

Step 3: Fanboys

Approximately 99.9% of all online forums are based around videogames. Sadly, there are several members of the videogame community who have such an overly-fanatical devotion to their particular console that they're somehow incapable of admitting any other system might have good features too. They're best ignored, because ‘Fanboys' are basically a special subset of ‘Troll', and as such are all Nazis and/or Hitler.

Step 4: Teenagers

Sadly, teenagers are allowed on The Internet too. They have funny ways of spelling and don't understand that proper grownups don't want to put up with their pubescent attempts at ‘humour'. There's nothing you can do about Teenagers on The Internet, you'll just have to learn to circumnavigate them.

Not all teenagers are evil, mind. Just most of them.

Step 5: Post Count

Every time you post, your post count goes up by one. Some people seem to think that the higher the post count, the more worthy and valuable they are to society at large. Frankly, the exact opposite seems to be the case; posting just to up your count is insanely annoying, so make sure all your messages add to a discussion in some way. If you're replying in a thread, make sure what you're writing is funny, interesting or funny and interesting. “yeh i agree lol” is not, in any way, shape or form, a valid reply, ever.

Step 6: Respect the Admins

It's their website, and they can do whatever the hell they like with it. You're a guest, and hassling them about how they run things is akin to going round your Auntie's house and curling one out in her tea-pot.

Step 7: DON'T USE ALL CAPS IN YOUR POST

EVER. ‘Shouting' through the written word is pointless and annoying, clearly.

Step 8: Lurk Before Posting

Don't just jump in to the forums spouting off reams and reams your amazing knowledge of the intricacies of World of Warcraft. In Binary.

Lurk around a bit first and read some threads to see whether or not that's even remotely the sort of thing people there would be interested in.

Step 9: Keep On Topic

If a thread's all about how amazing a new 2D Sonic the Hedgehog game would be, don't derail it and start talking about something else entirely, like Chun Li's thighs. Make a new thread if you absolutely must.

Step 10: Picture Etiquette

Don't post massive pictures that are wider than most peoples' screens. What's more, don't post massive pictures of filth or anything in case people are at work. Not even the most ardent straight man likes looking lewd pictures when sat near their boss. It's enough to put them off for life.

Step 11: NSFW

What's more, make sure you mark any risqué links as Not Safe For Work, just in case, and make sure doing so is in keeping with the forum's tone.


By and large, just remember to be excellent.

[JadedDM]

I agree with Stik. The BMP was bad enough; I learned to just avoid it. But the vitriol tended to spill out into the rest of the forums, too. It's a big part of why I left Planet the first time, to be honest. It just wasn't a fun community.

People tended to hassle me quite a bit because I had the audacity to not switch over to 3E when it first came out. 'Dinosaur' was one of the politer things people called me...which was ironic, because in general, I was around 5-10 years younger than most of the posters at the time.

Plus, the rampant racism, misogyny and homophobia...

I've always believed that the best way to build a good community is by not allowing people like that to have free reign. To go along with the video Stik posted, this article is a pretty good read on how internet communities work and serves as an excellent explanation for why the BMP helped lead to the decline of Planet.

[Cole]

Well worded guys

And thus why I deleted the BMP. It was devastating to a site I spent years building. I lost loved ones over the amount of time I put into this site while ignoring them

I strive now only to keep the site running and to maintain a loyal group of users that enjoy a place to hang out free from those who are "Hitler"-Like. Trolls will be BANNED quickly as I no longer tolerate that crap. However good debate and even flared tempers are fine when on topic.

Those who get out of hand now as simply removed from the site for good.

BTW, I'm still looking for a few more Great staff members to help moderate these forums. Right now they are slow, but PADnD is slowly coming back alive. People will return when they get sick of fighting on the other forums around the net. What goes around comes around

[mjolnirh]

wow the BMP I remember that lol. never posted there much though

[Crasez58]

I guess I just missed the trolls. And cole I'm always happy to help anyway I can. Off topic what ever happend to the trivia I miss it.

[Cole]

Trivia? What trivia? Remind me... I'm getting old?

I still have like 1,000+ pages now even loaded on the site anymore... if it's something I can pull out of the archives for yeah, I'll gladly do it

[Crasez58]

I can't remember the riddle but the answer was a shield lol it's been a while

[Crasez58]

Riddle master lol I had dig thru the waybackmachine to find the name but ya that's it

[mjolnirh]

There is the one from Beowulf

"I'm by nature solitary, scarred by spear and wounded by sword, weary of battle. I frequently see the face of war, and fight hateful enemies..." What is this object?

[Crasez58]

Exactly I would love to see that brought back

[Stik]

No reason not to put something like that in the Tavern.

[Cole]

I loved the Riddle Master... matter a fact I made all the riddle up off the top of my head so they were unique.

However, I removed it from the site because I just didn't have time to fumble through all the emails coming in with answers. I was getting upwards of 50 a day and it was time consuming and that is something I just don't have for something as trivial.

I can however post a HUGE db of riddles... I think we even have the complete riddle book for DL on the site

BUT, best idea is what Stik suggested, posting a riddle in the tavern and have people guess, they are forced to sign up and contribute to the site to that way

[Stik]

Over at another site I frequent, there has been a "Guess the Movie Quote" game running for years.
The person starting the thread posts a movie quote. If you know the answer, you post the name of the movie. The person who posted the line will say if you get it right. If you did, then you get to post a quote for people to guess. Rinse, repeat.

If they can do that, we can do a riddle thread.

Heck, if they can do that, WE can do it, too. I'm starting a movie quote game now. Here it is.