I understand how uncomfortable these types of posts make everyone, especially having been on the receiving end of such criticism a few times myself. Threads on conduct may get redundant, but I can only hope that a few of you will finally listen this time. I did, eventually, and I'm the better for it. So please...
Be nice to each other here. The purpose of discussion is to compare competing models of reality, and then use our intellects to determine which one is the most accurate.
Things that inhibit this process:
-Name calling.
-Demanding that another poster kill himself.
-Demanding another poster leave the boards, or be removed from the boards.
-Obliquely doing any of the above by using a group or another person as a stand in for the poster. "That argument is very much like ones that x uses, and we all agree that x is stupid, so you must be..."
-Blatant logical fallacies. I realize that logic is a subtle thing, and part of why we're here is to check our logic against our peers', but that doesn't mean that retreats into non-sequitors are permissible, and when you let one of these slip it can be as insulting as being called a name.
None of these things advances discussion, and they are therefore useless. Avoiding them also saves time, because by not doing these things you're spending less time figuring out how to hurt someone over the internet, and more time focusing on making your argument coherent. This means you get to post sooner and get back to that groundbreaking project which you were working on before coming to the forums.
Things that help this process:
-Formulating coherent thoughts which are interesting
-Posting those thoughts
-Attacking incoherent thoughts
-Praising coherent thoughts
Many people forget the last one. We're all in this sinking ship together; each day smart people get enough soul crushing criticism from normal society (made of manipulative losers who hate themselves and live to belittle others), so that to the sensitive or young it becomes almost unbearable. So each complement you can give someone here on something they did right is going to go a long way into sustaining their energy in finding and creating beauty.
Not that I want this place to become a haven of platitudes. It's been said we should attack bad ideas, not the people that created them; this is true, but we should also praise valuable ideas, not their creators. Praise for being a person is cheap and easy to come by, but praise for an idea, praise for your mind, is rare, and more valuable.
Similarly while I recognize that the topic for these boards is metal and that therefore you all have more confrontational personalities than the average, save it for bootcamp or strength training where that type of aggression can be converted into useful energy; shit-talkers are usually not ass-kickers.
/end christfag bong-hit rant