Status quo of this "community"

Dear all,

I do not spend a lot of time on these fora, but every time I am here, it disappoints me. Where is the fun? Where is the "we will help you with that mod" mentality? I am wondering whether to delete my account lately.

So there are people who say this is a community.
According to my best knowledge, a community is a group of people who are together and united in their ideas, believe or goals.
According to Wikipedia:

A community is a small or large social unit (a group of living things) who have something in common, such as norms, religion, values, or identity. Communities often share a sense of place that is situated in a given geographical area (e.g. a country, village, town, or neighborhood) or in virtual space through communication platforms. Durable relations that extend beyond immediate genealogical ties also define a sense of community. People tend to define those social ties as important to their identity, practice, and roles in social institutions like family, home, work, government, society, or humanity, at large

I don't believe this is a community nowadays, but a large amount of individuals, some small groups and some larger ones. I see an self-proclaimed elite, a low-level, a big group of people with immature or unreasonable communications and some others who are trying to have fun and help each other.

To the latter: I salute you!

What I like to ask for Christmas from all of you to reflect upon your own behaviour and make this formu they way it was meant to be: engaging, fun, constructive and motivating to enjoy the game!

Yours sincerely,

Johan

 

Yeah, 10/10 text wall, but you aren't really going to change that much.

 

Well it's good to see that at least someone wants to make an effort I suppose.
(Talking about crash's statement, not being sarcastic about standard's, but it could be taken both ways)

 

It seems to me that the 2 dominant groups are the younger people who are totally hyped and post about everything and anything. I like their enthusiasm, but endless bumping of dead mods and lots of new unfinished mods don't help the forum/community.
And then there's the older people that just get salty at everything. Mostly at those younger people. And last night we saw how that can kill a mod too sadly.
But there are plenty of nice people, I like the mods, I've talked to other really nice people, they just don't get as much attention as they aren't over the top hyper or salty.

So I can definitely see why people aren't too happy after the last couple of days. But if you just stay away from the newbie's WIP mods posts you'll notice there are also lots of nice people here.

 

It is a nice place. However, as the community grows, the vocal minority that loves to be negative will become more prevalent. Back when the game was in alpha, the community was much smaller and more hardcore - only players dedicated to the game were around. Now that the game has gained more mainstream popularity, you will see a more diverse set of groups. Some negative and vocal, others quiet and positive. IMO the best thing to do is engage only in positive communication and let the mods handle the negativity.

 

I dont want to change that much by myself, I think I am just one tiny part of whats happening around here. As Nadeox said, people make it here. Which is plural and includes him, you, me, everyone around.
And yes, change the world, start with yourself/myself. I'll do my best.

 

Can you add "I don't care" option to the poll?

 

that seems like a contradiction to me.
But yes, I can make a fifth option.

Done

 

The community here has helped me out on the past pretty well

So I’d think this community is great! But could probably use minor improvement.

 

The amount of complaining about it lately is rarely any better IMO... It's not going to solve the fact that the immature young audience is generally illogical and the immature older audience is generally obnoxious. There are helpful people around, and toxic behavior is very limited compared to many other video game forums, especially considering how many less mature people are attracted to this game thinking it's just a mindless crashing simulator.

 

I'm often silent on these forums, but I do look through some of them on a regular basis.
I give a rating occasionally here or there if I feel the post deserves my stamp.
Sometimes on rare occasions I do actually sing a post or two like right now. Heck... I remember when I called for help on how to make a paintjob for one of the official cars, and people answered. That was many months ago though and I completely forget the steps on making a skin heh.

 

My ideas on improvements

-For starters, I think modders should help new modders with their creations, instead of just throwing them a link to the wiki and giving them a half-hearted good luck.

-Private mods (Nuff said)

-nothing political

 

Unfortunately, about half of the time all of the mods are not online because they don't want to get mods from other time zones.

 

We are plagued of inmature kids, some selfish people, some dickheads and so on. Like every community. I dont see the point of complaining now to be honest. Thats the sort of people that play this game, and thats what we have to deal with. We have to deal with it. Maybe its hard, but thats how things roll nowdays, right?
To the second point, there are 3 big group in this forum:
-Elite: Modders, or people that do some sort of thing backstage that makes them respected. Not saying thats wrong, but some of this people i dont know where they came out of
-Middle Class: Literally the middle class of this forum, regular old boring posters that contribute to the community once in a while, and get severly annoyed when something disturbs the suburban life of the forum. (Example the shitposting, or the drama yesterday that killed a mod by attacking this)
-the Bottom (No offense intended): Where the actual kids lay. Squeeky voices and bad grammar fills this lands. This is where most of the trobble begins. But without it, our "Society" goes nowhere.
???: People that fit in 2 or more categories (When The bottom gets mixed with elite, guess what? Hell on earth)
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Honestly i dont think we are going anywhere at all with this sort of thread. Its just fertile ground for drama. All communities are subdivided inside, why? Because we are not equal. Some are smarter, some are more skilled at some thing or another, some are stronger. And thats where the foundations of a healthy community lay, on the interaction between this groups. One helps the other where the other falls short. But when one group starts thinking of themselfs as elites, or as superior, thats where the problems come up.
Now to be honest im not sure how well that came out. english is not my forte and google translate is worse. but i think the general idea is clear

 

It is good but quality is starting to go downhill...

 

If I typed out a response here, it'd be preaching to the choir... so I'll preach anyway. There are certain people here who need an attitude adjustment, but that won't happen, because they're busy hiding behind their mods and the sheep that follow their every move. I'm not even going to start to mention the circlejerking that happens when an inexperienced modder attempts to upload their first mod to the repository. Comments like "ITS TIME TO STOP, its complete trash" and "seriously this is awful." are absolutely pointless and serve as nothing more than unnecessary insults.

One thing - I just wish there was a dedicated forum/thread/something that purely designed as a way for new members to introduce themselves, get some tips and tricks for modding, and et cetera. To the same effect, I wish there was some way for new modders to submit their first mods without reviews, or maybe have a group of actually helpful people critique the mod before it is submitted to the harsh firing squad that is the repository. Reviews here are entirely arbitrary, and it is in human nature to want to give bad reviews to lower-quality things than it is to give good reviews to high quality things. I mean the repository can juxtapose someone's first skin alongside a 1000+ hour map - the issues that arise from this is fairly inherent.

But to go back to the issue at hand. We are the vocal minority of people who actually interact with the community, the vast majority simply use the forums for troubleshooting and downloading mods. They don't comment and don't want to, but they depend on us to provide mod content. We are the people who are responsible for how welcoming and nice this forum is. We have nobody to blame for the hostility in this forum but ourselves... and we are the only ones that can change this for the better. I know, it is so much easier to insult and demean new members than it is to help and welcome them, but this results in a hostile community which in turn makes less people want to join. Those people, the ones to whom you said "your mod sucks" could've gone on to make the next Canyon of Speed... but they didn't... because they didn't want to join a hostile community. There are a handful of people here, who are experienced modders/well-known members, who actively help and welcome new people and seek to make this forum a little more wholesome - they are the real MVPs of this forum.

Also, a well-advertised thread dedicated to welcoming new members would be pretty nice. *hint hint*

It is up to us to treat all members, new and old alike, with a welcoming attitude and respect. So be nice.
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Which mod got killed last night?

As for people on the forums, we could be off a whole lot worse. Every gaming community has idiots, but I'd say the ratio of idiots to rational people is pretty low.

Of course, that will change if the idiots keep acting like idiots and making some of the "elites" and "middle class" leave.
(RIP @Dummiesman, @Vinh, etc)

 

The problem with this is that there's too many people who want to learn how to mod, and there's only so many people who can help them and have the free time to do so. That's not even getting started on how jaded some of the modders have gotten to people asking for help.

What I've noticed though, is that if a new modder puts in a decent amount of work and comes off as a competent and mature person, the more experienced modders are far more likely to help them out.

 

I can't really say one way or the other. Something has definitely changed since I arrived, and I think there are a lot more kids now, but because my potato can't run the game, I don't really watch the mods section much. I do know there have been a few trollers here and there, including one awful one who played the part of an impatient, heartless 9-year-old on an old Narwhal mod thread by demanding it be updated NAO.

So, I guess all I can say is, don't flame newbies (even if you think they deserve it) and don't respond to or memorialize trolls.