I have deliberately posted this in the FS forum because this is the community that is most directly effected by this.If you have read "The Games People Play", you will know of "posion dwarfs"; people who no matter the situation, poison the atmosphere for others. Folks, I suggest you all have a read of Brent's Letter to the Editor here:http://forums.avsim.net/dcboard.php?az=sho...sg_id=824&page=Another very creative and contributing individual lost because of the vocal minority (fringe???) in our community. How many talented folks do we need to loose before the poison dwarfs take over? As a community, what are going to do about it, if anything? Does anyone really care?

Hi Tom,Of course people care about this, but what can we do about it?.I, at the very least, contact the author of every piece of freeware that I get that meets my approval and congratulate them, I feel that this is the least I can do for the authors.If I download a piece of freeware I dont like, I dump it, its that simple, I would NEVER gripe about a piece of freeware, this is simply unacceptable, its a gift.As for payware, thats a bit of a different animal, if I get a piece of payware that I dont think is good enough I will make a point of telling the developer that it is not good enough, after all I have paid for a "service" from the developer so they are excpected to make sure its good enough.It is fairly rare situation thankfully, but a couple of "incidents" lately have make me think about payware a bit more than I used to.The problem is, is it very easy to post on a faceless forum and speak in a way in which you would never speak to someone in person, I bet that many of the "dodgy" posts on here would not happen if the people involved were face to face.This is the problem with forums, prehaps we just need to grow thicker skins, after all does it really bother you that much what 14 year old little johnny thinks as he sits at his PC?, not to me.I emplore the "decent" people who enjoy freeware to make a point of e-mailing the developers of freeware which they enjoy and tell them so, I am sure, nay positive that the good mail will out way the negetive.Don't let the minority of "posion dwarfs" LOL, ruin this hobby, pasttime whatever.Dan.

Maybe you should set up a "Whiners and Gripers" forum with the following criteria:1. No nice people to talk to, ever! Meet your own kind! Moan and groan about everything with others who share your vindictiveness!2. Say what you like and do your best to ruin the hobby! Shout! Yell! Use smileys when you can't express yourself properly! Rant and rage! Spell badly!3. No locked threads, ever!4. Very little flightsim content of use to anybody, either!Nirvana for the trolls and pillocks! Then the rest of us can completely ignore that forum and get on with sharing ideas and remembering what flightsimming - and common courtesy to others - are all about.Mark "Dark Moment" Beaumonthttp://www.swiremariners.com/newlogo.jpg

A very telling question Dan; "does it really bother you that much what 14 year old little johnny thinks as he sits at his PC?, not to me."It certainly bothers me when the collective weight of dozens of little Johnnys drive people out of the hobby. Little Johnnys can also be big Johnnys who only act 14 (or younger) BTW...The purpose of my posting is to have a community discussion about this. My personal opinion is that the "fratracide" happening is getting out of hand, and irrespective of whether you tie it to freeware or payware, the tone and mindset are the true issues.As for faceless forums, I agree with you. We have often considered having not only a real name / email address tied to forum access, but in fact, tied to access to the site in total.

Great post Tom,One we all should pay more attention to.Best this holiday season,Clay

The major point of my reply was that there are many more people who like/enjoy the work others do and are less vocal about it than the people who dislike it.I have done freeware files and for whatever reason, be it that they do not appeal to people or whatever I have never recieved anything but thanks.If I were to get anything bad I would shrug it of, just like I do in real life, there are some extremely rude, ungratefull people about, I simply would not give them the time of day.As for the payware thing, I would add that I would doubt that I would "attack" a payware developer on a public forum, these types of things need and should be kept in private.I am also very sad that these sorts of people are driving great people out of our hobby, but I can see no way, other than some extremly draconian and time-consuming forum measures, to stop the trolls, but I would support any measures that are proposed to combat this.I would be interested to hear from any freeware developers as to the percentage of good v bad communication from there add-ons.Is it that these people are not "thanked" enough for their hard work?I also see that the "regulars" of the board, you all know who I mean ;), (do you ever sleep Dark Moment!!!) are never anything but courtious and friendly, its the "drifters" who come and go that cause the problems.Heres hoping we can keep this to a minimum, and not lose anymore good people.Dan.

I don't think it is just confined to freeware and payware.I notice a lot of old timers ("old" in flight sim terms only of course :-) ) post less and less or not at all. I know in my case over the last year or so I have lost more and more interest-primarily due to what you mention. It is a huge problem-real name/email might help. It seems however, to be a mindset of some that the internet provides the opportunity to unclothe their worst uncivilized quirks in a cloak of invisibleness.Unfortunately too, I can see a future time when these effects will finally make it to the top-and the folks that actually make the sims will also decide for a variety of reasons that it is no longer worth it. I am not so sure we are not getting close to this time now....http://mywebpages.comcast.net/geofa/pages/Geofdog2.jpg

Unfortunately, the more popular Flight Sim gets, the more this will probably happen. I've also noticed that there is a definate "spike" of this sort of activity for the first few months after a new FS release. What I'm doing, and going to continue to do, is hit the Alert button when I run across a post that I feel is over the line. It is then up to the moderators to determine if it is so. I think the real name and e-mail is a good idea. Probably will help to a limited degree. I personnaly would not have a problem whatsoever in the moderators "raising the standard" even more on what type of posts are allowed. Constructive criticism should be allowed, and healthy debate. That's part of the enjoyment and flavor of these forums. I feel like it is pretty easy to "filter out" the posts that are there simply to flame, troll or be hurtfull. The recent PMDG forum postings concerning the problems with the SU2 download is a perfect example. A very few individuals were posting some truly incredible, ridiculous, and hurtful comments. About the only thing we could do is hit the Alert button and continue to provide supportive messages for the team.

Tom,Here we are, on the 100th anniversary of sustained, powered, heavier-than-air flight, and what we should be thinking about is celebrating the miracle of flight, not dealing with the poison drawfs as you so aptly named them...I am a (very) infrequent poster to the forums, though I do read them daily. I would most likely be a much more active person in these forums if it weren't so downright depressing. Someone has suggested that you create a "Whiners and Complainers" forum - I think this is a great idea. Set it up as follows: if a moderator sees a thread that he/she feels is not being created in a professional manner, they simply move it, without warning, to the complainers forum. Then, if you can, set up the Complainers forum to automatically delete threads after 24 hours - enough time for people to vent, but not up long enough to incite even more complaining.I would also suggest that should you decide to do something like this or try to attempt some other fix, you take a very public poll and update its results on the home page daily to see how many people really want this type of fix. It might drive home the point that the poison drawfs aren't welcome here if all they're going to do is whine and complain.I know that the moderator's decisions would be subjective; there's no way around that. However, make it part of the rules that to participate in the forum discussions, you agree that they have the right to be subjective. :-) Heck, that might already be in there, but if it isn't, add that in. I've been involved with FS since FS2, and got involved in the CompuServe FSForum in the days of ATP and FS4. It was so much more civilized back then that I was able to meet my future wife in the FSForum! I seriously doubt that'd ever happen today. And that's sad - we have so much more to talk about today than we did back then.Anyhow, I've been wanting to post my thoughts on this subject for a long time - this thread is the perfect opportunity.To the AVSIM team, and all developers out there who help us enjoy this hobby, a sincere THANK YOU! Wilbur and Orville could never have dreamed that 100 years from their first flight, we would be sending robots to Mars, visit the Moon, and have thousands of 747s airborne whose wingspan is greater than the length of their initial flights. Let's concentrate on keeping their spirit alive so that our descendants, when they celebrate 200 years of flight, can see the same exponential development in man's dream to fly!Sincerely,

We already do not allow email address from hotmail, yahoo, etc. when a new user registers. Beyond that, we tried forcing real names, but that proved to be more trouble than it was worth.

While I understand the point of a Complainers forum, I don't think it will work. I think the number uno reason you see these posts is these users want as many people to see and respond to them. If you set up a forum where posts are removed, and all you get is complaints with no arguments from opposing views, it will quickly die since these users will not get any satisfaction or ego stroking.For example, if a company releases an add-on, and there are some problems, you will inevitably see trolling and other type posts. If these posts are moved, then you won't see (I know I would never visit the complainers forum except to dole out brutal punishment ;-) ) opposing views. I hope I'm making sense here, it is early in the morning and I haven't had my go go juice yet.This leads to my next point, which is that if we as a community can not reply to these type posts and let the moderators (myself included) clean them up, I think it will die out on its own.However it is very hard to just ignore these posts I know.Here is an image of a Poison Dwarf in AVSim.com:http://www.winternet.com/~mikelr/flame11.htmlRegards,

This is an interesting thread. Thanks for bringing the issue back to our collective consciousness, Tom.As George S. pointed out, as the flight simming hobby becomes more and more popular, we'll most likely see a continuation of this "poison dwarf" behavior. Unfortunately, IMO it's a societal problem -- it doesn't just happen here online. As for what can we do about it? I think (and again it's my opinion) that forums such as Avsim, flightsim.com, Hovercontrol, etc. are doing pretty much all they can without totally alienating the civilized users/participants. If a post gets out of control, it's locked (or deleted). Avsim requires real e-mail addresses. Certain people are banned from the forums entirely -- although thankfully this is a rare, last-resort action. From what I've read, the developers who have decided to withdraw from this hobby seem to be doing so because of the overwhelming negativity of e-mails directed to them personally; they are not necessarily leaving because of negative forum activity. So I guess what we users need to do is outshout the naysayers. When we add a download that we truly enjoy, don't just post a glowing report on the forum (although that's certainly better than nothing.) Rather take a moment to personally e-mail the developer with your words of praise. I admit I am guilty of neglecting to do this. :-shy This is a problem that won't disappear. But we should be able to lessen its impact on our hobby if we are more vocal than the poison dwarfs.-Lindy

I agree, good to talk this over. My measely 2 cents is that some people should just ignore some others who are mere Dwarves and let the download numbers speak for themselves. If hundreds and thousands grab it, what's a dwarf? "Of all the birds, the parrot is the best talker but the worst flier."

Greetings one and all!Negativity... there will always be negative posters and people who find fault with everything and the internet seems to be the proverbial flame drawing the moths of dispair. My persoal opinion is that people feel impowered as well as shielded (protected?) on message boards. They can rant, rave, say anything they want and no one can hurt them. They say and act in ways they would never dream of in face top face encounters. They are allowed to pretend, or at least fool themselves into believeing, that they are smarter and/or more important than they really are. To let loose and complain or rant makes them feel empowered because their real lives are pathetic and non-descript. They have nothing else in their worthless existance that makes them feel strong or important so here's their one chance to be somebody.How should we deal with these people? Ignore them. Delete their post. That is what they fear most. Wipe them off the bottom of your shoe just like you wipe dog.......well.... you get the idea.Flight simming is a wonderful, educational and thoroughly enjoyable hobby (obsession?). There are hundreds of wonderful people involved who make life a little better just by knowing them. I'll focus on those folks, take their positive energy and reflect it back on the community as a whole. Please, never let those who spew hate and discontent keep you from enjoying the hobby we all love.Thanks for listeningDave

Lindy,My main concern is primarily the attitudes and behavior on these particular forums that is ruining the hobby for many. I retired from design a long time ago, not because I didn't get respect. I got more than I really felt I deserved. I retired from design because of vision problems, however I still enjoyed flying from time to time.I used to frequent these forums everyday because I enjoyed the community as a whole. There use to be a comradary amongst the hobbyist. We didn't always agree, but at least we worked it out without having flame wars and trolls popping in and causing trouble.Now there are more people abusing each other, abusing developers, forum managers and that ought not to be so. I doubt seriously is there is one payware company whose sole purpose is to put out a crappy product and screw the customers. Their livelyhood is dependant on sales and putting out a good product. Others, it's a second job to make a little extra money.But reading these forums, you could sware that these guys are in it just for the greed. Give these developers a break and instead of raking them over the coals for every little glitch, offer some constructive solutions.Brent Hebert