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Situation
It's no secret that disputes and conflicts between players / people are part of the interpersonal communication and not really avoidable.
That doesn't mean that personal defamation is okay. It surely isn't. But disputes also can get kinda agressive without them, and without using cuss words.
Sometimes, especially when multiple different opinions come together, they occur in our forums. Players then first get warned, and later it ends up with the thread being closed.
I think one should let them slide, instead of closing threads. Unfinished conflicts often don't cool down so quickly, and if they get interrupted, the extertion often remains or increases.

Now people might say:

• #1 - "I don't want a forum full of people flaming around."
  Reasonable. But you don't get one. Allowing for hot disputes (without abusive language of course) doesn't mean that they are preferred. Everyone is urged to avoid them, if they seem unnecessary, but not forced to. Some kind of responsible self-regulation. Nothing can be completely regulated or avoided, and everything that sprouts out of the players heads, whether good or rather not, will find and demand it's room and place within certain constraints. Last but not least, it's also part of the game. An mmorpg like ours full of harmony will never work.

 

• #2 - "But I don't want to read a 10-pages-thread just to assert on page 8 that this thread ends in a conflict that bothers me."
  Agreed. Annoying. See suggestions :)

 

• #3 - "But our forum is some kind of figurehead for the game and the players living in here. It could discourage new players and be bad promotion."
  A founded statement, yes. But our figurehead should be honesty. You forget about the fact that not every player is a "nice" player, and that also very "kind" players can get surprisingly harsh. Not only the good and representable attributes belong to the players. The bad ones do, too. It's some kind of honesty. Every community that pretends to be or is suggestive of being completely friendly, full of harmony, joy and freedom .. simply lies. If players get discouraged by that bit of harmless conversation in our forums, they a) won't play any other online game, and b) will also get very discouraged and bothered by real life. So what ?

 

• #4 - "But these threads will flood our forums. It's also not good that new players can read threads that came up a long time ago, or that these can be continued after months."
  Exactly. See below.

Suggestions:
For statement #2:

• New symbol, visible from the thread index page, that indicates that this thread contains conflicts. (May be a "fist" like the one from the guild symbols list)
• New symbol, visible from the thread index page, that indicates that the thread goes off-topic at some point. (Not to be used for harmless and sparse off-topic posts)
• Both flags allow prospective readers to pre-estimate if the thread is worth reading. But everyone who is interested in this thread, is able to read and follow it.
• These flags could be set by a CSR, by the community, or a mixture of both. It could happen by votes.
  A CSR initiates a poll when necessary, and everyone who participated in the thread can individually vote for or against each flag. The vote elements could be put into the threads' head. To keep it reactive I'd suggest a 24h - 36h down-counting timer that closes the poll automatically.
  Viewers can vote too, but I'd recommend two restrictions:
  1. Their votes are invisible until the voting is finished.
  2. The system takes the count of the thread participant (the people that posted into it and actively took part), divides it by 2, and randomly chooses this amount of viewer votes, which are then taken into account.
  Reason: The thread and discussion is about the participants, not about the viewers. So their influence needs to be cut down. Above solution gives a total viewers' influence of 33%.

For statement #4:

• Threads could be automatically moved into an archive folder after some inactivity (let's say 30 days).
• Threads flagged "off-topic" or "contains conflicts" will automatically be removed after 90 days. This keeps conflicts "local" on the timeline, and avoids, that parts of very old posts get resurrected from the dead and quoted in current conflicts. Most things change by time, so do attitudes and viewpoints. Nothing should be carved into stone forever here, especially things of limited, narrow topicality and interest. 90 days are long enough that everyone concerned with this case can look up what happened.

For general threads:

• There could be an opportunity to vote for deletion too, to keep forums clear when public interest ceased.
• Threads older than 2 years should be auto-deleted, too. Maybe it's useful if a CSR had the power to save particular threads from deletion, in the case they contain valuable information.

Off topic:
The ingame BBCode parser should also parse all unsupported tags (just without applying an effect) so that they don't show up as regular text and distort the actual post.

*phew* .. finished at last. :)
What do you think?

Thanks for reading.
Best regards
Talya

First, I appreciate how much thought you've put into this idea, and how passionate you seem to be about it. I read it carefully, and agree you have some good points. However, I still disagree.

I do not believe that the forums we all share are the place for heated personal arguments, any more than the supermarket or classroom is, and even the manager of the supermarket has enough sense to ask you to leave, rather than let you disturb all of his other previously happy customers further.

Disputes, and anger, encourage more disputes and anger. Better to close the wound, clean it, and be done with it. Such arguments can be had elsewhere, if they are truly necessary.

Hello Melikai,
thank you very much for your comment.
I hopefully am allowed to enlarge a bit upon your arguments with regards to your justifiable worries.

First off, since english is not my native tongue and this is a difficult topic where even little subtleties of words come to more importance, I often run into difficulties to find the word that suits my intention best :( .. I hope you and other readers will excuse my mistakes.

Melikai

.. place for heated personal arguments, ..

First, and additionally to my text above, i'd like to take the opportunity and clarify, that I don't want to support nor allow "real" anger, rude language, gross misconduct, personal arguments or even attacks, or anything similar that violates the existing code of conduct.
My post is about "non-destructive", "non-rude" confrontation and conflicts, it's about people being able to dispute on a "higher level", without excessive anger, rude language, but instead with challenging and keen (not callous or grim) arguments. It's about to vent someone's anger in a positive way - whereever the pressure comes from, it's there and it will often grow, harden fronts or make people to never talk, play or grind with each other again, but react annoyed whereever the other one shows up.
And it's about not to be forced to stay on topic toooo strictly.

I am not sure if just preventing it by "taking away the room" is better than giving the parties a chance to clear it up and put an end on their dispute on their own. I believe that the latter way gives them a better chance to (re-)harmonize with each other. The first one just cuts the contact and leaves things unfinished.
Thats why I ask for your comments.

Melikai

the manager of the supermarket has enough sense to ask you to leave, rather than let you disturb all of his other previously happy customers further.

Yes, I agree with you. In a supermarket, everyone is "nearly forced" to hear and see what is happening around them, so it's easy for someone to disturb everyone with little effort, and important for the manager to get that one out.
On a forum, you have a choice, since nobody is forced to read anything or to take part anywhere. The mentioned indicators would also warn readers in advance. So nobody should be disturbed against their will, especially if these threads were put into a seperate section.

I hopefully didn't misunderstand you somewhere - please correct me if I did. :)

Thanks for reading,
best regards
Talya

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