Forums for a long time have been a place where people can go and have a healthy discussion or debate about whatever the subject the forums were designed for. I recall countless hours of reading interesting discussions and debates among forum users and in the end, you would find a couple folks getting to the meat and potatoes of an argument and perhaps even a greater understanding of the subjects at hand. It seems all of that has been forgotten in the years of new blogs and blog API’s arising, allowing more people than ever to put in their 2 cents on something, regardless of their knowledge on the subject.
Now, all you’ll find are very soft-spoken forums, where little to no relevant debate is actually taking place and everyone just accepts and believes what they hear or are told. Posting an opinion now will get you scrutinized and ridiculed for “being negative” or “trolling the forums”, even if your original intentions were simply to challenge someone’s thinking in a non-detrimental way… in short, there is no more debating people’s understanding of the world around them or you are viewed as “the problem” in the forums. Sad, but true.
Forums have essentially lost their very definition to a younger generation of computer users who have taken over the internet without ever gaining a matured understanding of what it is they are doing… when you start a forum, you are creating a platform for the exchange of ideas and discussions of other individuals. In doing so, you are allowing the free exchange of ideas and discussion to flow through your forums. As a forum moderator, your role is to help continue the movement of ideas and discussions towards the facts and the facts only… not spend your time deciding who’s right and wrong and being judgmental, but allowing the forces of nature to take their course and to steer the boat back on track when it gets off the subject or question posed in the thread.
As much as I would like to see the use of forums actually come back to fruition and have relevant dialogue again, I can’t help but notice the defensive mechanisms people are putting into play each and every day in their forum terms of service. It’s one thing to say you don’t tolerate hate speech… it’s another thing to categorically place someone in the ”hate speech” category all because you don’t know what the definition of the word is… not everyone is shouting “hate speech” when they disagree with another person in a forum… it’s okay to challenge another person’s thinking and it’s healthy to be a little offended, yet respective of one another to the point you would oblige with a response without pulling out the knives first. Anger and stress can be healthy emotions too when expressed appropriately. If we are all adults or at least mature about what we read, understand and say, then why can’t we take a little criticism as long as it’s nothing overtly personal to the receiver. God I wish people could just discuss things and not go overboard over words… words are not always weapons.
The other side of the issue really is that even the best of us can fail to respect one another. Without giving each other the benefit of the doubt, we fail to give people the opportunity to explain themselves in a way that promotes a comforting and non-agitating environment where conversation and debate can prosper in a healthy manner. I too have been known to go overboard when it comes to defending the app I work on, Navi-X.
Recently, I had a rather heated argument with Andrew of XBMC HUB in forums, then on to e-mail exchanges for the more vulgar communications. I pretty much threw down the gauntlet with Andrew and told him after we stopped being cordial that he needs to watch what he is saying cause it could end him up “in hot water or a shallow grave”… not the classiest thing I’ve ever said to say the least.
I then told him if he wanted to keep on debating with me about it, I would post his full name, address, social security number and personal finances on mIRC for sale… just test the waters buddy… again, overboard could not have been overstated in this case… while I’m pretty resourceful on the internet and could in fact do this if I so wanted to, at this point going from a petty argument to ruining someone’s finances is ridiculous, given it takes a lot of time and effort to do this kind of thing. I then told him if he just wants to end this argument now, just say so… then I got a response back that really made me unbelievably embarrassed, sad and depressed… he told me he would like to stop this please and that I was scaring his wife and family… that’s when I realized I was way out of line.
I never wanted to cause him or his family fear… growing up I hated fear… it was something I experienced a lot in my life, growing up with a family with 3 divorces, where fear was a tool used by my father on a regular basis to “keep me in check” and I used to really get picked on and bullied for being “soft” or kind to others… to say the least, this really screwed my mind up hard as a kid, teen and young adolescent. I hate fear in a way words cannot describe… I’d kill fear if it was a person.
I then proceeded to tell him how very truly sorry I was to cause him and his loved ones fear, how embarrassed I was to have gotten to this point. It was a very humbling experience to actually scare someone so great, they asked me to stop… I still feel quite ashamed about it and can never take back what I have done ever, even if they find it in their hearts to forgive me for what I’ve done. This is when I realized I took something so small as an offbeat comment from someone and blew it up to the point of life or death… I was far out of line.
I now know I need to re-analyze my priorities in life, what I believe and what I fight for. My father died 7 months ago, I’m in his home which could very well foreclose soon, I don’t have enough money to move out of the house and could end up living in a car for a while and God knows what… I need to focus on stability and who I am as a person… I am my own problem. I’ve decided I will backup from obligating myself from Navi-X for a little while until I get stability and structure in my life. I was going to college for the past year and a half after not attending it out of high school and being a “late bloomer” in the game and since my father died, I had to pull out of college and default on my student loans… so to say the least, I’ve built one heck of an uphill climb for myself and I need to focus on what matters most to me… me.
I will still be around chiming in with help, maybe doing some light work with Curt and others but this experience has definitely changed my mind drastically on where I need to focus… I hope anyone and everyone can understand where I am coming from when I say this. I let something as small as a semi-negative comment work me over and I clearly have personal problems I need to work through, but that’s okay… I know I have the problem and I have to work on it, step 1.
In short, I feel if forums returned to their old ways of discussion, I would not have gone off the deep end and brought it to a level of insanity never seen… I felt very offended, but at the same time I shouldn’t have… maybe that’s why I rely on the benefit of the doubt still, cause it’s always been my comfort zone. I hope forum moderators, bloggers and others will read this and learn from my mistakes. While I can’t change the world, I can hope that the world can change for the better still and we can all find a level of reason that has been lost for decades now. While I wait for the world to change, I can only look inward and try to better myself as a human and as Bill Daly should be.
iRoNBiLL
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