Is it just me, or do a lot of people in this sub-forum have super negative/unhelpful attitudes?

Nimblepaw·5/30/2019, 9:27:37 AM·13 votes·8,305 views

Feels like everyone trying to learn/improve on what caused them to get a ban/penalty gets put down even by heralds/mods. Most people are trying to learn, or at least get a secondary opinion about what they did. I actually feel like some of the comments on this forum would be getting you a chat penalty in game lol. But am I the only one who's noticed this? Not to mention mysterious amounts of upvotes or downvotes that are multiple times the actual comments.

Edit Bc I typed this up originally just before bed.

Why do most of the regulars of the player behavior forum respond to clearly toxic situations/posts on a regular basis, while there's nothing wrong with being blunt to people, what drives you to comment? Do you think it will help them reform if enough people tell them it's their own fault?

66 Comments

KFCeytron5/30/2019, 9:44:46 AM9 votes

Most of the threads here aren't people trying to learn/improve; they're just rants about how the OP shouldn't have been banned because they don't agree with the rules. If they were trying to learn, they wouldn't respond with e.g. "this is utterly ridiculous," "people just reported me for no reason," or "I said a few nice things that Riot removed from the log" (which is either an outright lie or an admission of falsifying the posted logs, as Riot provides full chat logs). They would say "oh, I see, thanks for clearing that up" and move on.

Although this Board and the game both call for appropriate behavior in general terms, they are different places with different purposes. In game, you're supposed to use chat to work with your teammates and secure a victory. On the Player Behavior Board, the idea is to discuss the behavioral system and inform punished players as to how they can improve their behavior. If you see a comment on Boards that you find offensive or harassing, report it.

Many people vote without commenting as an easy way of indicating whether they agree or disagree with the OP.

TL;DR: Telling a toxic player exactly how they're being toxic isn't negative or unhelpful even if that player disagrees. Telling a toxic player that they did nothing wrong and the rules stink would be negative and unhelpful even if that player agrees.

ModThe Djinn5/30/2019, 12:12:55 PM4 votes

So, since you picked a specific comment of mine, I'll pop by.

The bluntness of my commenting is almost always driven by how much honest self-analysis would be required to actually remove the need to ask a question (i.e. how blatantly obvious the offense is), how much legitimate confusion/concern/dedication to improving the player shows, and how much their thread seems willing to accept the possibility of their error. If you come in saying "this is absolutely wrong and dumb and stupid and this bad is ridiculous," while your log has, say, hate speech, I'll be extremely blunt. If you come in saying "I'm really puzzled by this one and I'd like to prevent it happening again -- what was my issue here and how can I avoid it again?" I'm likely to be much softer.

In the comment you specifically called out, the OP said the following:

...its gotten to the point where oneshotting the adc and typing in chat "get off my screen" is deemed toxic.

...oops you said that jax with no full items at 45 minutes was useless, hey thats bad.

...Im just so fucking sick of people being hyper sensitive to any criticism or somthing they dont like.

Had the log not been full of obvious insults that a minute of self-reflection would have found were definitely above the "get off my screen" or "calling someone bad" level, I would have been much softer and more helpful in my tone (as I often am, if you look through my posting history). When someone does not seem inclined to actually look at their own behavior and acknowledge the possibility for error, however, I become more blunt. I did, however, still make a productive post, because while it is blunt it also clearly identifies the bits that were over the "friendly trash-talk" line.

ModPeriscope5/30/2019, 1:51:24 PM3 votes

Feels like everyone trying to learn/improve on what caused them to get a ban/penalty gets put down even by heralds/mods.

If you do see negative behavior anywhere on the boards, always feel free to report it or come to the Discord to report it to us.

Why do most of the regulars of the player behavior forum respond to clearly toxic situations/posts on a regular basis, while there's nothing wrong with being blunt to people, what drives you to comment? Do you think it will help them reform if enough people tell them it's their own fault?

I'd like to think I help them reform, after any penalty. But that's always entirely up to the OP.

You mention the deadpan responses, and I try to be blunt and concise with my answers, as you never really know how much of a response someone will read, so you have to make your words count.

KFCeytron5/30/2019, 9:49:44 PM3 votes

{quoted}

Your entire forum history is you going to posts and calling out the OP's toxic behavior and what you think they did wrong, in fact you left an extremely generic yet critical comment on one of my posts where I was asking if people thought I deserved my 14 day suspension.

Edit: on top of this according to Op.gg and your league of legends match histories you haven't even played a game in 31 days, and summoners rift isn't even within your last 20 played games.. you are exactly the type of person this post is addressing.

{quoted}

Yeah, that was kind of pointless. It would've been better worded to say, why do you give daily feedback in the forums about players behavior, when you don't play the game on a regular basis? I guess it gave me the opinion that she comes to the forums planning to be negative. it wasn't meant to be an attack, but to point out her activeness on the forums vs in the game itself. [sg-lulu]

{quoted}

I guess I don't understand why people respond to situations like that.

I.e. A few people above when I look at their post history its a lot of "the reason you were banned is you flamed" etc. Like, why sit there and type that out again, and again, and again? It just seems overwhelmingly negative.

You have obviously not done the research on my "entire forum history." I briefly looked over my last two weeks of posts, and here are the numbers of posts I've made in each sub-Board during that time:

GD: 36 Gameplay: 22 PB: 20 Memes: 9 SAS: 9 Videos: 3 Bugs: 2

GD is the clear winner, followed by a mix of PB and Gameplay (with a slight edge going to Gameplay), and then a smattering of what would be labeled "Other" in a pie chart.

To paraphrase Brand, this account is just one of many. I don't necessarily play LoL every day on an account I made for the novelty name. The game mode I play seems even less relevant than your other points so far.

And, again, don't conflate negativity with disagreement. Just because a post isn't exactly what you want to hear doesn't mean the poster is trolling you.

{quoted}

Gosh, let me try and rephrase um....

Ok, so the example that comes to mind, is I have a few coworkers who have worked at my company for 15+ years. They never got promotions and they lack enthusiasm. if you ask them a question, they sigh and give you a deadpan response..

When I see that someones forum history is majoritally explaining to people why they got a ban, that's what i picture. While the response itself is kind of blunt but not outright offensive, when I see people choosing to come do it every day, and thats the majority of their interaction, it comes off as a negative pattern... does that make sense? XD

Maybe those coworkers are tired of answering the same questions for 15 years. Maybe the questions are answered by the manual which the asker obviously didn't read. Maybe they even wrote the manual. Maybe the answer is available not only in the manual, but via a quick Google search. Maybe they think the answer is so blatantly obvious that they're not sure if it's even a serious question.

{quoted}

I found Kfc's comment on my thread to be lacking in thought, In fact I completely agree with Dynikus's summary of why I received my penalty, in what is the most upvoted comment on my thread. Generic meaning there was no thought/analysis, though she wasn't wrong.

On topic, I've just been reading a lot of player behavior posts today and I find most of the commenters to be trolls, I wasn't referencing my own post.

So, my answer was spot-on, but also thoughtless and generic? Ask a thoughtless and generic question, get a thoughtless and generic answer, I guess. There's not much I can do about that.

{quoted}

Hmm, well it was obviously very poorly done on my end, but it was an attempt to get back on topic from me.

Like, Why come to the forums daily, and tell people they deserve their penalty, instead of playing the game daily. Getting online to criticize people is a pattern of negative behavior IMO Which I don't understand

Edit: I should have asked KFC why they got on the forums daily, while not playing the game, instead of pointing it out with accusatory phrasing, I just don't understand at all, not trying to start a fight lol

Again, you don't know how much I play the game on my main or my other novelty accounts. It also has nothing to do with how much I post on Boards, which - unlike playing a match - I can do without dedicating 20-30 minutes of intense focus on a resource-heavy application that runs best in fullscreen mode and really doesn't do well with being alt-tabbed. But thank you for your interest.

Umbral Regent5/30/2019, 10:28:44 AM3 votes

Feels like everyone trying to learn/improve on what caused them to get a ban/penalty gets put down even by heralds/mods.

For starters, if you want to discuss the behavior of the Moderation team, you'll probably want to go to Discuss the Boards or take it up with someone in the NA Boards Discord.

Beyond that, I'm seriously doubtful that the Moderators/Heralds have spoken down to anyone recently, much less throughout their time in the position. They hold themselves to a pretty high standard of respectfulness and impartiality, so unless you've got evidence, I'm gonna have a hard time trusting what's already put forward as a subjective feeling.

And, like KFCeytron said (though not precisely), more often than not, the people who come here asking about their punishments seldom actually want to or try to learn or understand; I can see how the responses to those players can be seen as putting them down, since, naturally, when folks are uncooperative, it's going to color the responses they get from people who initially try to help, but at the end of the day, it's a two-way street.

If one party isn't coming at the other even, the discussion isn't going to go anywhere, no matter how civil and respectful the other party tries to be.

So if people really want to learn and improve, they wouldn't shut us out when we explain where they stepped over the line, and they wouldn't adamantly insist that they did no wrong, or that their behavior was justified by someone else's misbehavior - etc.

Most people are trying to learn, or at least get a secondary opinion about what they did.

Again; more often than not, we wind up seeing people shut out opinions that disagree with them. There are certainly a fair handful of people who do try to understand and learn, but the greater portion are looking for validation or an echo chamber.

And you can explain the same stuff over and over 'til the cows come home, but if the person you're trying to explain it to refuses to hear it, then they're not gonna learn.

I actually feel like some of the comments on this forum would be getting you a chat penalty in game lol.

Some, I've seen, yes. And typically, those comments also earn some form of punishment on the Forums when reported, too. Mostly comment/post pruning/removal, but sometimes warnings and temporary suspensions are used when someone is proven to be belligerent.

But am I the only one who's noticed this?

"Noticed" is probably the wrong term to use here; at least, it's inconsistent with your opening by saying that what you perceive is "feeling". So, for the sake of semantics, I'm going to take this question as "has anyone else felt this way" instead of "has anyone else noticed this".

And the answer is that there are doubtless some out there who feel the same way as you. I myself ain't one of them, being frank. I've hung around PB for a while, so I'm pretty well familiar with the way discussions go. While I can say that there are some (myself included) who could certainly do better to keep composed when people start throwing up walls, I wouldn't say that people frequently talk down to others.

Not to mention mysterious amounts of upvotes or downvotes that are multiple times the actual comments.

Define "mysterious". I personally start considering it sketchy when a comment/post jumps to 30-40 votes in under an hour.

Yuumì one trick5/31/2019, 12:07:03 PM3 votes

I agree completely. I've made a few posts in the past about trying to reform, and it's hard for me. I'm an ill-tempered person. And every single time I've been shot down, belittled, made fun of. People were even witch hunting me, stalking my EVERY post and EVERY comment on this board to the point it got so bad I had to switch to this account to post here. All because I was either confused about a punishment, or because I was trying to really show my passion to reform my ill behavior.

Sarutobi5/31/2019, 5:51:44 AM2 votes

I think a lot of it comes down to people just not putting up with BS anymore. Far too many times that I've seen on this board in particular where people try to act like smartasses with clear indications of them breaking numerous rules. But try to play it off as if they are the victims.

It's annoying and doesn't help anyone in this situation. But that doesn't excuse some mods or people on this forum that are basically toxic towards people who break the rules. It's pretty shitty to do and doesn't fall in line with the ToS!

C9 Aphrolift6/2/2019, 11:28:34 PM2 votes

I think most of the mods actually react fairly neutral and try to be helpful. Or that has been my experience anyway.

Sometimes you don't need to comment as you either agree or disagree with what was said.

There's going to be crazy close minded people with opinions beyond what you could possibly imagine but yeah you are on the internet so it's to be expected.

Mantipede5/30/2019, 4:43:56 PM2 votes

From my experience being a forum mole (across many games, mostly League and WoW), you don't typically see the people who are enjoying the game post on the forums. Maybe it's because they're too busy playing/enjoying the game to browse a forum, I don't really know.

I surf forums in my spare time because I am bored and want a connection to the game even when I can't play it.

Krofinn6/1/2019, 1:28:39 PM1 votes

"Is it just me, or do a lot of people on the internet have super negative/unhelpful attitudes?" Ftfy