by Lowkey:
Kiya mentioned once how nice it was that the German members had a friendly community, not just "nice" behavior on the surface, but real friendships. People you could share things, even difficult personal issues with, and they would be supportive, they listened and cared. But the English speaking forums never quite congealed into the same thing, IMO there was a bud, but the flower never quite bloomed, though there have been attempts.
Well, I wouldn't say it's that simple in the German forum. First of all, there are less people... and less posts... that's the main difference.
Another difference is that the community there is still based on the forum "characters" and not entirely on the real persons.
Generally, I am really surprised by the problems mentioned here. How can one person cause such troubles? How gullible have people to be in order to believe stupid PMs by such a person (or any other, for that matter)? I mean, sure, I can try to tell [nocando] to people in PMs, but why would anyone believe that?
Personally, I don't have anything against talking in PM but if someone tells me negative details about anyone else, I don't just believe that... if I care, I try to find out more. And if I don't care, I shrug and don't do anything.
I think some people here should do the same instead of getting emotionally involved this much.
With that, I don't want to say that I don't regard the community here as nice thing... but after all, it's only an online community. Even in "real" communities, you have various problems, so why wouldn't there be such in online ones? However, I have to agree a bit with Lowkey there. I don't have the time to check the English part every day or even post regularly. But when I come here, I often see a thread in which these problems are the topic. Someone leaves, comes back, leaves again, sulks, cries, is mad, leaves again, is mean and whatnot.
I am not a great fan of such threads at all... mostly it looks like this one. Viper posts something bad/unfair which happened to him, and then everyone feels the urge to assure him that he is nice and that they feel with him and such things. That might be correct, I don't want to say Viper sucks (even though I don't like the car), but I don't like such threads. It's not really productive and represents rather a giant group hug.
A group hug can be nice of course... but not in a forum in my opinion. And the worst part is: If you dare to break the vicious circle of hugging and assuring and post something remotely criticizing - even if you don't mean any harm but just want to provoke some thoughts - you get the evil eye.
I might be exaggerating a bit, but it's a recurring pattern for sure.
