Unless there's something weird going on with them (e.g. they've got a mental illness, poor self-control, or twisted agenda that drives them to misbehave deliberately) just about everybody on the planet is doing what's right.
Conflict between people arises because what's good or bad is a matter of opinion. There is no universal, we build our concepts of right and wrong from what learn from our environment, and everyone's is a little different. When these opinions start trampling on each other, that's the stuff wars are made of.
As for the Escapist forums... well, I've found myself on the receiving end of moderator wrath more than once for being a bit too abrasive for young sensibilities to handle. I'm pretty sure whoever I was talking down to deserved it, but that's not the mod's problem. It's a public forum on the Internet, they don't have the manpower to discern who was in the right, they're forum moderators, not court judges. Justice here is of the frontier variety, inaccurate and quickly delivered, because when you're less than a dozen lawmen handling a community of several hundred thousand, that's about the best you can do.
Does that mean the Escapist forums are bad? Well, I'd say the worst bit is that the ignorant teen prattle has taken over. Enforcing tone is easy enough, if prone to mistakes, but enforcing intellectual quality of posts takes a level of manpower they did not have. However, while ignorance may be the true root of most evil, youth isn't quite the same thing. I say the truly good are those of us who strive to learn as the best they can and never settle for easy convictions. Those of us who embrace ignorance, who wield stale ideals as bludgeons to stave off the struggle of perpetually grokking reality, there are your wanton perpetrators of wrong. Which path you prefer has little to do with age.
So perhaps the forums are a good place. Sure, they're predominantly terrible wastes of time, but they wouldn't be this much fun if you weren't learning something here, and if you're learning, some good is coming of it.
Conflict between people arises because what's good or bad is a matter of opinion. There is no universal, we build our concepts of right and wrong from what learn from our environment, and everyone's is a little different. When these opinions start trampling on each other, that's the stuff wars are made of.
As for the Escapist forums... well, I've found myself on the receiving end of moderator wrath more than once for being a bit too abrasive for young sensibilities to handle. I'm pretty sure whoever I was talking down to deserved it, but that's not the mod's problem. It's a public forum on the Internet, they don't have the manpower to discern who was in the right, they're forum moderators, not court judges. Justice here is of the frontier variety, inaccurate and quickly delivered, because when you're less than a dozen lawmen handling a community of several hundred thousand, that's about the best you can do.
Does that mean the Escapist forums are bad? Well, I'd say the worst bit is that the ignorant teen prattle has taken over. Enforcing tone is easy enough, if prone to mistakes, but enforcing intellectual quality of posts takes a level of manpower they did not have. However, while ignorance may be the true root of most evil, youth isn't quite the same thing. I say the truly good are those of us who strive to learn as the best they can and never settle for easy convictions. Those of us who embrace ignorance, who wield stale ideals as bludgeons to stave off the struggle of perpetually grokking reality, there are your wanton perpetrators of wrong. Which path you prefer has little to do with age.
So perhaps the forums are a good place. Sure, they're predominantly terrible wastes of time, but they wouldn't be this much fun if you weren't learning something here, and if you're learning, some good is coming of it.
