Where have we gone wrong?

[Harrod200]

When I joined the PR community back around .5/.6, it was filled with people who were friendly and helpful to the newbies. Even if someone made the dreaded fastropes suggestion, they would be politely told it couldn't be done and in future to use the ASS thread and to search.

In the last couple of weeks alone, there have been some prime examples of the downright hostility from some community members to newbies. It seems that slowly, there is developing an atmosphere of "1337 PR Vets in it since .1 who know everything" vs "Damned n00bs who come here to personally insult us by not knowing everything like we did from the start".

Here is one example; several members respond politely, explaining about how PR is slower than vanilla, until two members, who have definitely not recently signed up, decide that there is a better course of action in shouting at the new player.

Here we have the suggestion. Of 6 replies, 2 are vaguely helpful, 3 are basically spam being used to pretty much attack the OP and the last is the mod locking. If I didn't know why that suggestion were taboo, and it weren't for DeepSix's and Lithium's responses, how would I know what I had done wrong? Frankly a MOD should, when locking a thread, give a reason, even if it's a copy-paste answer referring the OP to the ASS thread and search instructions; simply locking a thread with a sarcy comment gives a pretty damned dire impression of the community's policing.

Now yes, you could say that those OPs should have read the manual, or done a search but is that really any excuse for showering them with abuse and taunts? It's the job of the MODs to inform people of wrongdoing, not the community at large. There is a report button on the forums for a reason, it calls a MOD to the thread to deal with it as they see fit. If you don't have anything constructive to say, don't say anything at all.

Am I the only one who has noticed this of late and has found himself wondering what happened to the friendly and helpful community of days gone by? There are still good people here, but they seem to be getting outnumbered by griefers more and more, and most disturbing is that these people all seem to have joined long ago.

[Colonelcool125]

I was just about to post the same thing. There's too much taunting people who are new to the game and asking honest questions. Although there does come along a few people who deserve to be taunted every once in a while.

However, on the second suggestion, the guy has 1600 posts. If he's been here that long, one would think he knows about fastropes.

[Harrod200]

OK I missed his count and arrival, but still, the point stands

[youm0nt]

Originally Posted by Colonelcool125

However, on the second suggestion, the guy has 1600 posts. If he's been here that long, one would think he knows about fastropes.

Surprising the people in that thread didn't catch that...

[[R-CON]Wolfe]

Thread titled "Pet Peeves", seventh post down:

Originally Posted by Blackhawk 5

4. People who suggest fastroping

Treated poorly? Lucky he wasn't banned.

[spacemanc]

I agree - Im sure it puts off some people from commenting or giving feedback or even joining in the first place. After all, why bother if you're going to get aload of grief - its only a forum.
Bf2 is a pretty old game now, so theres a pretty small pool of potential new "recruits" - PR needs players just as much as it needs DEV's.
PS I must say I always find it very friendly in game.

[Tirak]

To be fair on the first one, the only guy who really gave him grief was himself new to the board and probably felt he had something to prove. If I were to run into a fastropes suggestion before it was locked though, my first response would probably a smiley, then my most posted line:

Resuggestion. Please use the Search Function and ASS List before posting suggestions.

EDIT: Okay, I was wrong, the first guy joined in 05 but apparently posts about 10 posts a year...

[Colonelcool125]

Originally Posted by spacemanc

PS I must say I always find it very friendly in game.

I agree, it is usually very friendly in game. However:

A word to people who ask questions in game:
We will be nicer to you and answer your questions if you type properly.

"Hey guys, how long is the warm-up time on choppers?"

will be met with polite answers usually. Unlike this:

"hey doodz lst time i flew teh chopa it flpped ovr WTF is with that."

Which will be greeted with sarcasm and about 40 people saying, "Read the manual."

[[R-COM]Outlawz]

As far as Blackhawk5's thread goes, he's just weird like that.
He used to be around here during 0.4/0.5 then disappeared after 0.6

But no need to end the thread, because the OP doesn't describe just one incident, it describes the entire start up with 0.8.

When I joined the PR community back around .5/.6, it was filled with people who were friendly and helpful to the newbies.

Maybe because then the mod wasn't as hard to learn as it is now and the community was smaller?

I do believe that there are a lot of great players, that you could get by helping the mob of lost newcomers, but most of the time that doesn't happen. Why?

-everyone is sick of repeating the basic stuff that you could read the the manual
-most noobs (yes noobs) insist on whining their own thing, like
'how do i fly'
'pilot kit'
'wut? I want to fly, I want to flyyy'

And so on, gotta go..

[Dr2B Rudd]

There are so many n00bs, some I like, redraven was on today with me and the lads on Kashan "I don't need to read the manual, I have you guys" we had a laugh, and he listened to what we said

Then there was this other n00b, who spoke perfect English (which is surprising considering He was American /joking ) yet refused to hold down left click on the mouse when healing.

There are nice n00bs and bad n00bs, and ingame you can quite rightly tell these bad n00bs where to get off

but on the forums. HELP THEM OUT!