I remember that comment. I assume no one replied to it because it was kind of off-topic for the thread it was posted in and didn't really add anything to the discussion. I didn't bother pointing that out at the time because I was just happy to see you actually talking about music for a change of pace.

Sopsych, your concerns are definitely being taken into advisement, I assure you. I'm glad we all have this opportunity to air our grievances on both sides of the aisle of all issues, and that's what this thread is for, in the hopes that we can change things for the better.

Thank you for your contributions, and everyone else as well. I just want to let everyone know that we are not just sitting here defending, but trying to be actively involved in the discussion, which is great for poking holes in either side's approach, and it ultimately helps at the end, because we are all in the position to be a factor of change.

Again, I personally thank all of you, and I'm hoping soon we can move forward to a more positive environment based on the concerns of all involved.

I really do not see why you guys are continuing to give this guy your time and attention. He has contributed next to nothing to musicbanter as a whole and just repeatedly complains while doing nothing about it. He has 22 created threads here on musicbanter almost all of which are put together with minimal effort.

Because whether he has contributed or not, he's still a member of the community, and whether we're addressing him or not, we're really just addressing the community, and he's really just serving as an example.
There are certain things that go beyond what they seem, and this is one of them. If we did not use the opportunity he presented to explain something that is truly relevant to the rest of us, then we would be doing everyone a disservice.

I appreciate your position, however, you must realize that we are not really speaking solely to Sopsych when we reply to Sopsych. The very fact that we are debating this in the open, as moderators, should hint at the fact that we are making our positions known on the topics he is bringing up, in the context of general behavior and perspective.

When we feel like it's no longer productive, you will know it. :)

There's a real possibility that your subtext is going unnoticed, as people may see "Sopsych" in the quotation and skip past all of the circular dramz.

I post and mod on a forum which has a thanks system in place and I think it does more harm than good. Basically what it encourages people to do is thanks-whore by trying to make the wittiest posts they can so they can massage their e-dick. This often leads to completely pointless and counter-productive replies to serious and potentially interesting threads and can often derail a thread before it even gets off the ground. There seems to be a common habit in some threads to try to be the first to reply with a witty remark and receive loads of thanks from everybody, even if the reply adds nothing to the original post and in quite a lot of cases it doesn't. Some people will even just thank posts and not contribute anything at all just like the way people vote in polls here and not add anything in the thread itself.

It does have it's benefits such as posts which actually deserve thanks getting just that. This can be useful when you're skimming through a non-debate thread with quite a lot of posts and you only want to find the posts worth viewing. It also discourages people from replying to posts with just '+1' or 'I agree' which is a complete waste of a post if you ask me.

I think MB is just fine without a thanks or rep system in place and a simple statistic such as a post count doesn't even mean that much to me.

I agree, I don't think a reward system is the best idea. The original posts in this thread were criticising the fact that the forum is very cliquey, I think a 'thanks' or 'like' based system for posts would just make it into even more of a popularity contest.

Your comments regarding a reward system have been mentally noted. Considering all of you seem to feel that way, you must be onto something.

You're misunderstanding my position somewhat again. The jist of it is this. Any poster reacts and adapts to his environment. In a certain environment, a poster may be productive and friendly. In a different environment, that same poster may be disruptive and hostile.

I'm not saying that people are not inherently interested in making this place the kind of place they want to be part of. That is a strawman argument. What I'm saying is that it is possible to change the environment of the site so that it discourages bad behaviour and encourages good behaviour. It is possible to change the environment so that people behave better. The mods becoming more strict is a means to that end.

If the environment discourages people being nice, it is hard to be the change. Imagine a forum full of bastards and you're the only one trying to be nice. You'd be eaten alive. If there are no mods, then perhaps taking the high road in a conflict only results in you not defending yourself while your opposition heckle you. You would be less inclined to do it because there is little reward on your part. If mods could protect you against such heckling, it would be easier.

Every forum feature, every member, every mod, every bit of layout and how things work can potentially add positively or negatively to the environment. Just to illustrate with a bizarre example, imagine the users of a forum getting ever so slightly nicer to eachother as a result of changing the background colour from red to green. You know, possibly that could be a miniscule effect - perhaps not even measurable - but it could be there.

In an environment which discourages or even punishes people rising above conflict and looking the other way, being nice and taking the high road will be done by conscious effort despite the negative consequences doing so will have for a member. If that environment doesn't change, how do you expect people to keep it up? But if the environment encourages niceness and taking the high road when conflict arises, people won't need to take the high road out of conscious effort. It's just the natural way to behave in that situation, in that environment.

To use another analogy, you should treat the disease rather than the symptoms. If someone has a fever, you can take a pill to get the temperature down, but it's better to remove the cause of the fever. I admit asking people to be the change is valid, but if it's the only thing done and the environment doesn't change sufficiently and the only real consequence is that they stop to defend themselves from heckling, then they won't keep it up. The forum will inevitably go back into its old shape.

I don't have to imagine, I actually belong to such a site, although I wouldn't say I was the only one trying to be nice. Maybe one of the one of the reasons I never fully quit the site is just to show them I haven't been eaten alive.

Here's another stupid idea from the people who brought you BEER MILKSHAKES! (Red Dwarf in-joke)

Few people want a karma/reward system, and mostly I agree as that can be totally abused. But how about a sort of "member of the week or month" thing, where a member is recognised for the good they have done over the last week/month in promoting a healthy atmosphere in the forum, staying out of drama, sorting things out, creating decent threads etc etc, like a sort of example of the sort of person we want here? It could have its own thread and when people check and see who's been voted (presumably by a panel, maybe not just mods, maybe a PM vote system but the votes would have to say why they're being cast for that person) others might then want to aspire to that sort of behaviour and it might promote, you know, good vibrations?

No? Then I hope you all die in a train crash! :rofl:
Oh for the love of ... anyone who doesn't realise that's a joke needs to go into hospital now and have a sense of humour implant. It's a simple procedure and your medical insurance will cover it.