1) People do have the freedom to voice hateful opinions. However, most of the time they come off rude and aren't needed.
2) If a map has OP items, you still don't have to play on it and then it won't affect you.
People often use OP items as a reason why they hate a map. Can't the items be removed rather than the map itself being removed?
3) The short and annoying threads really could be in a status update, I agree. However, they have a right to make a thread about it. That's what the community corner is for, isn't it?
4) If a map is added to the servers, it should
never be removed. Why? If it was good enough to get accepted, it's good enough to stay. Even if you don't like it for some reason or another, others still do. Saying what's wrong with a map doesn't warrant a removal. You don't have to play it if you don't like it, even if it is underplayed.
5) People shouldn't voice their opinions if they are hateful. That's just rude and disrespectful to the people that the opinions are targeted towards.
I agree with you. That is the difference between criticism and hate.
I know you've made other replies on this thread, but I want to take this one since I feel it'll show off my point best.
I'll go down your list from 1 to 5.
1. What do you mean, they "aren't needed?" If the community doesn't like a certain map, any person has the right to say that the map sucks, AS LONG as what they're saying has VALID points. Even if it is harsh, the best kind of community is one that is well informed, if we all sit in silence with no right to say anything with common criticism, then we sit in our own garbage.
You know why movie critics do harsh reviews against terrible movies? So they can get their point about how terrible a certain flick was, and that people hopefully won't go see that certain flick. They use criticism and harsh judgement to hopefully provide some points that will help for aspiring movie makers, or for people that just want to go out on a Friday night to see a movie. If every single critic sugar-coated a bad movie, those points wouldn't slap readers across the face as well, which leaves their points flat.
2. I agree mostly, but apparently MCSG for whatever reason has trouble with actually removing the OP items, so they sit as tools for people to use unless the map gets removed.
3. The Community Corner's a place for, well, Community-related discussions. Introductions and stories can take part in community discussions, because introductions are a great way of getting yourself out there, and learning a few things about MCSG. You might consider stories to be non-informational, and most of the time can be mainly personal. But, the reason why I'll take these threads over quitting threads is because stories actually have some sort of value in them.
Don't know what I mean?
Stories can also be kind of like introductions to a certain person in a way, you write an entire story about yourself so that the community can get to know you better, and learn a few things about that certain person. Stories just narrowly cross the line between being useless, but I've seen them as a good passage-way for milestones, and they've helped me as a USER in the community learn more about the community as a whole.
Quitting threads, or any other form of attention-seeking threads need to STAY OUT of the forums, although they won't since they've trended so much. Usually, these threads provide no sort of useful reading material, except to those that know the person quitting PERSONALLY.
Quitting threads typically have two parts to them. Part 1 is the section where people will say why they're leaving, and Part 2 is that obnoxious part where they "thank" all their friends for something. (I mean, seriously. You have to tell them this in a thread?) While Part 1 can be informative, once again, they typically only refer to personal reasons as to why somebody's quitting. (AKA Something-That-Should-Go-In-Your-Freaking-Status) Part 2 is just the same exact thing but more long, drawn-out, and in hindsight completely useless.
4. Oh my God, that statement is SO obsolete, I don't even know where to start.
*sigh* Okay, let's take Boombeard's Battle as an example. The map got added, and literally right out of the bat it was subject to terrible reviews and was removed from the servers pretty quick.
Now, I am the type of person where if you play a map I don't like, I will leave and go hop on another server. But seriously, THAT does not mean that if a map gets added it should stay forever. Typically, if a map gets added and nobody likes it, why are we supposed to, by your logic, keep garbage on the servers?
Typically, since you may or may not reply back with: "Well, if the community liked it so much, that it should stay in!" I'll counter that too.
Visuals can be a lot more deceiving than what you're actually playing.
Now, most maps like Community Maps go through the acceptance process by making a thread. From there, you can show cool pictures and maybe even a little information about the map.
But, does the community get to play the map yet? No.
Then, the map undergoes some sort of tiering by the staff if it gets enough approval by the community, and high-staff as well.
Once again, during all of this, the community doesn't get to play the map just yet.
OPTIONAL ROUTE: Test games by bigger build teams are made, so that at least a small few people can play on the map to test for bugs, errors, or anything else wrong or incorrect with the current map.
Now, this time a few SELECT players will get to play on it, but once again, 99.9% of the community has yet to actually test the gameplay of the map, so once again, it gets a No.
Once all of this happens, this beautiful map that was all hyped up, gets disproved by the community in terms of gameplay. If it sucks, it shouldn't be kept...
I mean come on Captain, maps get removed all of the freaking time for being terrible.
5. Now, there's a difference between hate-speech and criticism, but that's been pointed out in the thread like a million times already, so I won't bother.
Bonus Number 6: This number will be regarding this quote, riiiiiiiiigggghttt here:
I'm not saying people should post unnecessary posts, or advertise. I'm just saying that if you don't like something, then don't read it!
All I can say is that with this kind of ideology, MCSG would be the absolute scum of communities.
Remember what I said before, how a well-informed community's the best type of community? That can also apply here.
Take this for example: Somebody puts an article in a newspaper about a certain product. Let's say you like this product, but when you start reading it he's bashing it. Like, the enraged person you are, you throw the newspaper away in disgust, but you chose to ignore the rest of the article cause you'd just get more angry if you read it.
Then the author decides to go on about all these deadly side affects, so if you use that product you could die. But, you didn't read it, so now you may end up dying from using the product.
It's far-fetched, but the point I'm getting at is that as a community, if we ignore things just cause we "don't like it" or have "different opinions", that basically makes us children. We're basically all supposed to follow whatever somebody says, with no freedom of our own to say anything that could potentially spark some debates on the forums.
Whenever I have a differed opinion, I'll NEVER say anything without reason. I understand the difference between some idiot saying something like: "hurrdisisbad" and somebody who actually has a valid reason for something. If we have differed opinions, we have just as much of a right to read a thread and comment on it with our own freedom. It's not cause we like reading things we hate, it's because we have a different perspective on things, and without that, we have no freedom of our own.
I understand the difference, but if there's something that I don't like, by the rules of the forums as long as I'm calm and provide good reasons, I have the right to do so.
