func, as far as I'm aware,* does not harbpr any open Nazis or Stalinists, people with loli avatars, or Nazis/Stalinists with loli avatars. Those facts alone put func ahead of plenty of internet communities I've observed, despite a small group of cantankerous grumps.

*I don't use IRC or Discord or whatever the hell else so I'm unaware of what goes down there. 

Soooooo the func / TF community are not toxic ? Could it only be that drama queens have been drama-queening around ?

Now would be a good time to post and offer some insight to not have one's complaints dismissed as above. 

Well that's something at least, that the community avoids the internet-political tedium.

As for discord: on the original worldwide quake mapping community server at least, there's a clear balance between keeping it liberal and fun, but drawing a line before any actual abuse (the only person to get kicked for a post content had said a racist jest in a cruel context). In the guidelines...

@everyone : Please note that while #terrafusion is proudly maintained as a liberal open-minded discussion platform that is accepting off and sometimes promoting off foul language, vulgar banter and sordid topics of discussion, IN CONTRAST: actual extremist views, genuine harassment, xxx-phobias of most forms, and persistent targetted banter when requested otherwise are not tolerated. PLEASE if you feel uncomfortable with aspects of the channel or think anything like that is occuring in a genuine way, RAISE THE ISSUE FIRST (in the channel or message a moderator) to prevent further problems.

Come along and give it a go: https://discord.gg/d5mytUj , everyone is welcome. 

Maybe so??

It does seem to be that there are mutterings about a "toxic" community but when it comes to actually clearing it up, finding out what is going on, being accountable for stuff or open with issues....people are suddenly clamming up.

Surely if anyone has an actual problem, this would be a good place to raise it and resolve it??

Or maybe it's just not that bad... (which personally I think is the clear truth, but I don't want to dismiss others concerns if they're actually going to raise them). 

From the newcomer's point of view a portion of the community suffers from the typical "Internet doesn't understand free speech" syndrom. Free speech protects from govt shutting down one's ability to critique govt actions. Being an ass and crying that soy snowflakes don't like one's "sense of humor" isn't covered by free speech. It's just being juvenile and not willing to own it. Not being as toxic as, say 4chan is a very low bar. But I guess it's hard to ask for more on teh interwebz these days. 

That sounds worth looking into, can you be more specific what problems you've encountered??

I don't know what this "soy" trend means and I've never visited 4chan so that's not a context I understand. 

Soy acts like estrogen. So soy or soyboy has the same meaning calling one a pussy does. 4chan and places like that are pretty good at using covert language of this kind.

This divides people into there groups: those who are in on a "joke" and play along, those who understand and aren't and if they complain, the third group will claim that they either don't understand or don't think it's that big of a deal, effectively siding with bullies. That's why it's so hard to get rid of pepe and ok sign which are nazi winks and nods - many simply can't or won't believe this is happening. :)

But to be clear, I'm not claiming that someone did attack me here. I just read tons of threads from the last 10 or so years and it's a general observation of mine. It is possible that some of this behavior toned down but I'm also watching discord servers and it doesn't seem to be the case. All that seems to indicate is that func became less relevant as a form of day to day communication, not that people, behaviors and attitudes have changed. 

I'm starting to think this is becoming an imagined problem. Every community has shits, and the only difference between them is that some communities ban the shits, and some have no mechanism to ban the shits.

We don't have a mechanism to ban the shits so we have to put up with a very, very occasional shitstorm. It's pretty easy to dig up one of these shitstorms from 2008 (for example) and say "look how shitty this place is" whilst kinda forgetting that this is a post someone made in 2008.

AFAIAW the common or garden internet edgelord doesn't really post here. These are the chaps that go on massive rants about muslims or gays or jews or women or whatever. Already that elevates us above 95% of internet forums. 

These examples are not for the sake of calling out individuals, but rather some common patterns of behavior. Maybe it is "banter" and I'm not picking up that tone, but both cases seem to have pushed people away from here:

1 - in the SM189 thread, there was talk about TBA143's map. It was a first map with some rough edges, but also some promise. AFAIK, TBA143 hasn't made any more mapping efforts for Quake. http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=61660
This is a case where we could've said "What kind of experience were you trying to create? I didn't get it / it wasn't for me, but the brushwork was really promising! Hope to see more maps from you in the future". See also the recent SM196, 195, and JamX conversations around Ing and Pinchy maps. They're doing something different with the tools, and it won't be for everyone, but we should welcome that variety and be glad that folks are trying different things (even when they fail).

2 - The General Abuse convo around "RetroPew". Again, maybe this was banter and I'm failing to pick up the tone, but I think there may have been a more constructive way to have this conversation. http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=1&start=30994&end=31010

Are either examples "toxic"? It's absolutely not 4chan, but these conversations come off a bit more like meatheadded miscommunications, but they're also both about maintaining a kind of orthodoxy of Quake, which is rather rigid. 

TBA143 made multiple later maps as Ukko though. 

is kinda mild. One guy says "gameplay is bullshit" because it's a map with no ammo in it (i haven't played it myself), but the rest of the beefy comments are actually defending the map it seems. 

Inside jokes are unavoidable among small communities. Especially when they know each other since long. It's never easy at first for the newcomer to get the local spirit and dialog subtleties between old members (!). As a long time Quake lover, steady lurker and rare poster on this forum, I really see this 'toxicity' as an imaginary problem too. Autarchy and self-regulation works well here. Without proper official moderation, I think Func is a great example of a long time healthy community forum after all.

Day by day life between people knowing each other well is generally full of (sometimes nasty) jokes, rants, flames, sometimes anger and rage quits. This is the price to pay when your life is built on love and passion. No mysteries here. No toxicity either. Just healty passionate people. To hell with god-fearing confessions ! (After all, Quake is about lurid dongeons, monsters, gothic visions, bloody body explosions and all, right ?)

And yes, maybe a 'beef thread' is filled with hard to catch spirit from a noob point of view, but anyway in this case, just refer to the Fight Club first rule... 

It's fair enough to say you don't like the name (I don't, for all the same reasons as have been posted). This is just feedback. I think the error there is probably as you say "meatheadded miscommunication" where the language used is a bit too strong for the subject at hand. Serious enough to raise it as an issue though? Quakeulf didn't seem fazed at all by it, so that's debatable.

A good post by JohnXmas btw. :cheers: 

Was there a better way of communicating with an extreme purist who doesn't think our maps are Quake maps anymore. Hmm no I don't think so.

It was obvious bait and/or cry for attention. It was met with an appropiate response. 

Felt like my responsibility, being the organiser of that particular pack.

Speedmaps are a great gateway into mapping, nowadays often very good maps in their own right, and I resent a worthless anon calling tba/ukko's map a troll map that shouldn't have been included.

Anonymous posts are the antithesis of func culture. 

just want to note here that the real toxic comment about TBA's map was from some fuckwad wanking shitecovered cumguzzling dick inhaling asshole anon again. 

@Kinn
My point is not just the comments directed at TBA's map. The whole conversation turned into a beef where it was difficult for additional feedback that wouldn't get wrangled in. It's all a bit "salt the earth and let nothing grow"... or, to JohnXmas's point, it may be playful banter that I'm misinterpreting as a relative newcomer to the scene.

@otp
Good to know TBA is Ukko! That deflates my point a bit, but that's a good thing. 

There's no two ways about it, anonyposts have the ability to trigger a shitstorm, where otherwise there wouldn't have been one.

As soon as someone is accountable for what they say, they tend to be more civil.

The shit-talk propagates in both directions, when anons are involved. As well as anons shit-talking, a logged-in poster can also shit-talk back at the anon without needing to be civil in any way, because it's not personal. You don't know who's on the receiving end and it's fair game.

So it was that shitpost begat shitpost begat shitpost begat shitpost , until the great brown ouroboros of shitposting finally disappeared into its own arsehole and func was no more, save for a small, rusty-hued, infinitely dense pucker in the fabric of cyberspace.

The quake community, born from a love of the brown game, eventually died at the hands of the brown post. 

This one started over on #tf Discord and continued over here.

http://www.celephais.net/board/view_thread.php?id=31497&start=1033&end=1033

Could you blame a newcomer for reading this and being a bit put off? 

...is that people who have left here due to harassment or rudeness aren't around to explain why and who was responsible. Which makes this thread kind of pointless. 

My newcomer's perspective: I basically started speaking to the people who were receptive to my mapping interests and answering my questions. Nonsense posts I didn't understand did not concern me so I left them alone (who knows what long standing beef exists between strangers on the internet). After getting to know who is who, it's really not so bad. It is the internet after all, but more than that, it's an internet forum about a video game. Banter is part of any community after all- digital or otherwise.

The time has come to abolish the schisms of yesterday! One global Quake community- One struggle!