urfisch,
I agree with most of your points, but with a few caveats:
> First:
Tone is really easy to misread, especially with only the written word and with many members who have English as a secondary or tertiary language. I've seen many people happily back down and publicly apologise when something they've written has been misconstrued and I have had to do it myself a couple of times, particularly when I first started. The problems happen, as you so rightly point out, when a misconstrued (or badly worded) comment causes so much offense that everyone gets their backs up and a word war starts.
Whenever I've reported a post the moderators have stepped in and dealt with it, but moderators are only human and have to sleep and work themselves, so sometimes things get out of hand before the moderators can react. I assume they try PM before publicly telling someone off, so we're not always sighted to how they solve problems.
> Second:
I used to be VERY protective of my mods, particularly those that were 'new' at the time and I considered them my private property, to the point where I asked one of the respected members to remove my mod from his site as I wanted sole ownership. In retrospect, this was wrong and I've adjusted my view: anyone can now use my mods wherever they like as long as I get a line in the credits. I make mods to improve my own game and release them in case anyone else wants to make the same adjustments.
I agree with privateer - the WOW factor is important to modders as positive comments tend to be few and far between. One of my mods hit 1500 downloads but I only had about ten comments on the thread which made me give up modding for about six months as I was feeling unappreciated.
> Third:
If you have nothing nice to say, say nothing. If you've already been down a modding route and failed, explain why and it will help the new modder (or team) to discount a couple of options, hopefully leading to a successful mod. Positivity is important, negativity is counter-productive.
I disagree with: Some switched to mod sh5 and some stayed at sh3. This shows, its never been that important to be a community, which helps each other. I mod to change my own game and release it if I think others will want to try the same thing. My computer won't run SH5, so I stuck to SH3 because I can't afford a computer upgrade. The community works, but you'll never get everyone to switch.
> Fourth:
Once a discussion becomes emotional it is likely to turn into an argument, and arguments are counter productive and likely to turn personal. I agree that arguments should be closed down, but moderators are human and are probably trying to see whether the individuals can resolve it themselves. If they step in too early, people lose the ability to back off and apologise to each other which is the usual outcome.
> Fifth:
Respect was decreasing but seemed to hit it's lowest point about 12 months ago and has been on the up since. We all have a role in increasing the courtesy and understanding on the forums. What we don't see are the PMs that moderators send to warn people about their actions. I'd be interested to see how many situations they've diffused without having to publicly humiliate/tell off people.
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