1 hour ago, 109Sqn said:

 

So true! The internet is a haven of brave cowards.

Great statement 109Sqn and really so true in the majority of cases.
No matter what forum you visit, you will find negative comments and attitudes to various degrees. Choose your topics to contribute positive comments and always try to see the glass half full! 
PS: I do spend most of my time on this forum, because I believe there is a heightened sense of reputation, good will and knowledge, in the areas of this hobby that mean the most to me.

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by Doering

I like Avsim. No forum is perfect but there is a decent balance here between tolerance and necessary moderation. The key forum element for me is that you argue your case, not the person. If someone starts attacking you unreasonably for simply holding a view, that's when things get out of hand. There is one particular individual who began a campaign of personalised attacks every time I expressed my opinion. Each time I tried to reply sticking to the subject and ignoring his quite wild accusations, he became even more aggressive. 

Eventually other people started posting similar views and he realised if he was going to get personal about me he would have to get personal about everyone else. 

The other problem occasionally here is people taking offense on OTHER people's behalf, often when that other person actually took no offense at all. This being offended "by proxy" is one of the reasons twitter is so toxic, and is a phenomenon that has been written about by some quite eminent psychologists and interested journalists. Here is a good article about the subject of taking offense by proxy:

https://www.irishtimes.com/opinion/brian-boyd-the-narcissism-of-taking-offence-by-proxy-1.2583543

I don't find AVsim any more or less "toxic" than any other forum, and certainly not more toxic than the official MSFS forum or Reddit.  I do find some of the moderation extremely inconsistent, but that's not toxicity - it's just another reality of any forum.

I think the quality of discourse has maybe declined a bit in the past year, due to some users platform warring after MSFS was announced.  But overall?  It's fine.

16 hours ago, Dominique_K said:

No need for a drama or soul searching  here 😀.

There is a small group of sad clowns at Reddit who are now also on MSF forum whose favorite passtime is dissing Avsim, sometimes with truly  filthy posts (at Reddit which is not too picky about what you can post...).

Not the same aliases but the same themes and vocabulary so I suppose the same posters. It seems that most were ejected from Avsim over the years for bad behaviour and piracy. 

Reddit itself does seem to be host to a ton of complainers. I have a love/hate relationship with Reddit.

It's pretty much like the guys talking football at my local coffee shop ( no, not the same semantics as in the Netherlands... ), or the other guys talking politics, or my colleagues at work talking IT ir Meteo, or.... It' Human Kind..ness...

Truth is, I can't stay away from this daily poll of AVSIM - it feeds my neurons with the necessary energy to keep uninstalling simulators of all kinds !

🙂

 

Love AVSIM, after all... and all of you guys, trolling, or dreaming, or sharing quirks or hypes ! Keep alive, and kicking !!!

Avsim stays the place to come because of its community.

Try Reddit, the old Flightsim.com or even MSF official, the contributions are generally lighter in content. I tried Reddit for a few months. You can say almost anything there that would legitimately be censored here but for what ? Browsing their MSF forum is mostly boring.

At the end of the day, the average quality of posting  content is what makes a forum great or not. A lot of mature and knowledgeable people at Avsim. A critical mass of  pilots and  developers and old and young serious simmers. And people of all nationalities. That brings frictions from time to time as we are culturally different (humour or bluntness don’t travel well over the internet for instance) but this is one of Avsim’s asset I like.

We have seen since the MSF release a lot of new faces. And I am pleased to say that was for the good ! A welcome rejuvenation.

There are A-holes like in every walk of life, like in your local bar,  but the « ignore user » function is a great tool. I put there all the unpleasant contributors (to me or others), the f a n b o y s and haters, the puerile or the senile 😄. Makes reading the forum more serene, more interesting. Sorting out the wheat from the chaff. 

I’ve noted in the recent months a less intrusive, less whimsical moderation. Focused on disturbing posting only.  A very welcome move IMO. 

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by Dominique_K

I think that any outsiders who consider the AVSIM forums to be "toxic" are just jealous that it is actually the exact opposite! In other words, the general "toxicity" of the internet is not welcome here.

I've found AVSIM forums very helpful in all those years. There are very positive, constructive and knowledgeable people that want to help with their experience in these complicated matters around the complex software that's behind a flight simulator. To the extent that people keeps that positive and constructive attitude this place will continue to be great.

Regretfully sometimes some individuals come in with negative and somewhat immature behavior and don't make proper use of the advantages of this forum. Not very often, I've had to add someone to my "ignore list", which is something I don't really enjoy on doing. Hopefully those cases will be kept at a minimum with proper moderation, to allow this site to continue being the best one for the entire flight sim community.

Cheers, Ed

 

Wow, there's a whole lot of self-congratulation in here.   But, that's not surprising since we're all here, presumably, because we enjoy this place more than we dislike it.  That's as true for me as it is for anyone else; there is a lot of great content here and as I've said before I consider it to be my flight sim "home" on the internet.  That said, though, Avsim also has some major, glaring flaws and is often massively blind to them.

But first:  what is "toxic"?  What defines "toxicity"?  It seems these days that most folks use the word "toxic" as a general descriptor for anything they find disagreeable.   I suspect this usage evolved from the jargonization of the ur-phrase "toxic masculinity", but in this case "toxic" meant something more specific.   It referred to the personal and societal damage done by the casual homophobia, misogyny, and aggression present in the traditional role of the "man" in western society.  It wasn't "toxic" because it was unpleasant, but because it caused actual harm, and that's the definition I think of when I hear "toxic" used in a social context.

Given that, let's ask again:  is Avsim really toxic?   Does it cause harm to the culture it is part of?

To answer that you need to look at its flaws.   Some of them have been mentioned here, in particular the "stubborn passion", for lack of a better phrase, of some of the users here.  But Avsim's biggest flaw, in my mind can be summarized by one word:

Gatekeeping.

We tend to be a very insular community, and hostile to outsiders who do not take particular pains to "fit in" to our very specific culture.  Further, because of the older tilt and deeper experience with flight, both real and simulated, here, a significant portion of the user base seem to feel themselves as being a cut above the flight sim population as a whole.  This is in evidence in this very thread, in which other fora are denigrated because they have more young people, or more of those silly "gamers" who have no place in the Serious Business of flight simulation.   Or, at least, the presence of those individuals is used as a scapegoat for the sites' other perceived flaws.

I have talked before about the various people I've spoken to over the years who have wanted to participate here but are afraid to.  I've made suggestions for ways in which the site can be improved to be more welcoming to newcomers.  I've pointed out areas in which we are lacking, like the file library which has fallen way behind our peers, and where improvements could help retain relevance in the growing flight sim community.  On the whole, though, it's fallen on deaf ears.  With the exception of some other folks like me who are willing to irritate others by repeatedly making noise about it the overall population here seems to be perfectly content with keeping their walled garden clean and excluding the riff-raff outside the gates.

And that is our right as a community, I cannot deny that.

However, one must always be willing to look outside one's community and into the greater social context in which we find ourselves.  And that context is this:  civilian flight simulation in particular has long been a fringe portion of an already fringe hobby.  It has, traditionally, looked unsurprisingly a lot like the general population here: older, more conservative, and very Knowledgeable and Serious about flight simulation.  However, this demographic has been changing in recent years.  More people are starting to discover the hobby, and get an interest in it, and want to explore it.   The release of MSFS has accelerated this, and has put the first true breath of fresh air into the community that it's had in a good while.  It's opening the doors to the hobby that we all love for many people who never would have even considered trying a flight simulator until they could give it a shot for a whole $1 on Gamepass.

And that sort of growth is crucial, crucial, to the long-term health of a community.  Without new blood, and in particular new diverse blood, a community will soon find itself aging, stagnating, and withering.  And I think a lot of us have felt that in recent years; a lot of us have also felt how that is changing now.

But there's a problem, and it is this:  we do not present a welcoming face to new members of the community.  Sorry for the emphasis, but if there is a single message I want to convey here it is that.  No one starts a hobby with deep knowledge and experience, talking about the finer details of flight models or learning how to start up a complex airliner from cold and dark.  Most people coming in are going to start the way a lot of us started back in FS1 or 4 or X or whatever you came in on:  tootling around in a 172, crashing it, having fun, and trying to figure out how things work and if this is something that they want to spend more time on.  And, yes, taking lots of screenshots.

And, given the pervasiveness of the modern internet those people are going to look for a community.   But, honestly, as much as it pains me, I really hope that most newcomers to the hobby do not find Avsim as their first community site.   That's not because I don't want them here:  just the opposite.  It's that, as I said, we do not present a welcoming face.  I can't think of much that would be more discouraging for someone just getting started than to come in here and read this thread, and see a bunch of "old fuddyduds" talking about how unpleasant they find kids and "gamers" and how they don't visit other sites because they're there, and we're glad we don't have them.  I hope they end up at reddit, or at the official forum, or at a number of other places first.   And maybe then, once they get their feet under them and are established in the hobby and not ready to be driven off by a site that has forgotten what it's like to be young, naive, and excited, then they won't be as chastened by the experience here.

If they ever decide to participate here at all.  Which they may not.   Because at times we're guilty of a heck of a lot of gatekeeping.

And that gatekeeping can be actively damaging to a community, just as much as gatekeeping in traditionally male professions from soldiering to programming damages and weakens them.  Because, believe it or not, some of those annoying screenshot-spamming gamers could evolve into developers for A2A, or PMDG, or whomever the relevant folks in the community are in a few years.  And we will be poorer if we don't have them around.

Given that, and given my earlier definition, I would say that yes, I do, really, think that Avsim is toxic.  Not because of the passionate people, or the odd disagreements, or some folks who are too forceful with their opinions.  But because of our rather stagnant and exclusive culture, and the arrogance with which we look at the wider community around us.

And that is a lot more than I planned to write.  But clearly this is something I am very passionate about.  Because I enjoy flight simming, and I enjoy this site, and I want both to flourish and thrive with a constant injection of new, diverse blood.  But I'm worried that's not happening.   At least, not here.

 

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by kaosfere

@kaosferePhenomenal composition and very thought provoking! So true about the file library!

Edited November 2, 20205 yr by Doering

All good reading so far!  But, everyone keep in mind, that the toxicity comes from the membership here and what is considered "toxic" by one or some, may just be considered an opinion by others.  Our job, as moderators, is to try keeping the forums on an even keel and hoping not to P.O everyone involved.

Carry on and please stay on topic! 😁

Thx Kaosfere,! basically second what Doering said🙂.

 

I saw the latest MFS release only a couple weeks ago and first impression

was this is BIG. Saw the bugs (happens with most releases) and thought this is BIG, both out of the box and

as a future platform. At a guess i think 2021 will be very interesting. The gamers and younger ones could take

to flightsim big time. As they frequent these forums, all i know is ALL are singing from the same hymnsheet, iff

that makes sense🙂.

21 minutes ago, charliearon said:

All good reading so far!  But, everyone keep in mind, that the toxicity comes from the membership here and what is considered "toxic" by one or some, may just be considered an opinion by others.  Our job, as moderators, is to try keeping the forums on an even keel and hoping not to P.O everyone involved.

Carry on and please stay on topic! 😁

charliearon,

Thank you so very much for your kind and compassionate permission to continue this discussion. I can only assume that this is a moderation.

Tony

 

7 minutes ago, himmelhorse said:

charliearon,

Thank you so very much for your kind and compassionate permission to continue this discussion. I can only assume that this is a moderation.

Tony

 

No moderation, just my thoughts as I read through this topic.

Very simply..."A day without AVSIM is like a day without sunshine"!  The question of toxicity is friggin' ridiculous.

 

Stan