What objective criteria are you evaluating? All three terms (garbage, bad value, lame project) are subjective opinions.

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You can usually tell who is trying to stir the pot and who objectively had favorable or unfavorable opinions on a game or topic. I ignore the people to who stir the pot. Usually, it's just met with a downvote. For others, you can have constructive conversation without putting each other down or devolving to "You're stupid and your collection sucks!"

Ignore them and they go away. If they have no one to feed off of, they can only yell at the wall and will leave, when they don't have that energy bouncing back. There are some people that fly off the wall too easily. For those people, I say relax, enjoy the forum for what it is (a place to have conversation about a topic we all love) and play some pinball. Any one person telling me I'm stupid and my collection sucks isn't in my basement with me flipping. To that point, they can be keyboard warriors all they want. I'll be pressing start.

You’re wasting your time if you think that you can change people on Pinside MapleSyrup, haters are gonna hate and Stern bashers are gonna Bash.

Well, I think a lot of the actual kernels of criticism leveled at Stern are, at their core, somewhat justified. And an online forum is a good place to enunciate those critcisms, for the community and hopefully for the company as well. What's not justified is the tedious repetition, over generalization, or hyperbolic exaggerations. The personal grudges that emerge are largely an inevitable product of those kinds of overreaching posts.

your post saving the internet or at least Pinside from the internet? Yeah, sounds a bit much.

This is my number one gripe with the internet. The crackpot down the street from you with terrible ideas that everybody used to ignore can now reach just as many other people as something like the evening news can. And all the other random crackpots hear that guy and are like "YEAH!" and the band together and make a bunch of stupid noise and then people somehow treat it like it's credible and worthy.

I do this as well, but I also come back to Pinside because just hanging out in an echo chamber of people who think exactly like me all the time gets a bit repetitive. I come here because I can get all kinds of info and discussion I can't get in the closed groups.

Do I wish some of the more vocal... people... would maybe go away? Sure. But it's not my site and I can't just ban those guys so I choose to gloss over them for the most part and take what I want from everyone else.

I choose to stay and try to contribute to add value to Pinside. If you just give up and go away, you're letting them win.

I appreciate your thoughts, MapleSyrup. And I share some of the concerns for sure. The negativity bothers me sometimes even though it's really only happening in a small section of Pinside (mostly the new games/manufacturers sub-forum threads) it's very prevalent in the current setup of the site (single frontpage list of topics): the negativity constantly boils to the top. Now, this is gonna change soon with an upcoming front page redesign that I'm currently in the final stages of developing (some people who have already seen it, love the new look)

But yeah, for me the negativity is an energy drain for sure. Having to deal with it time and time again. And often times there are opposing camps both pulling on me to do something about whatever the other camp is doing. It's frustrating, to put it mildly. And what's even more tiring is catching myself trying to come up with ideas to solve the issue. I've already tried a bunch of things over the years, but nothing really works. The growth brought some of these problems. I remember I once got so sick of it that I kicked off a bunch of people - well, others quickly took their place.

The truth is, it's not just Pinside, it's pretty much everywhere on the web. Places like Twitter and Youtube and many big message boards. And if those huge corporations can't fix the negativity issue, then how could Pinside? Personal opinion, freedom of expression, negativity, and bashing, friendships and vendetta's: it seems they all come together, unable to exist alone.

Personally, I've given up on thinking I can somehow change peoples behaviors online. But I'm always thinking about technical solutions to the internet issues. I always believe technology can solve any issue in the world. Someone PM'd me today with an idea involving machine learning to keep threads on track and enforce site rules. That's really interesting (but a bit above my hat, to be honest). I'm gonna read up on the subject though

Another idea that could work is to separate the large number of posters on Pinside into smaller groups. Have people create their own group and give them some control over it. Groups could assign their own moderators, who together would vote on membership, group rules etc. Would it work? I dunno. Might be worth a try. Obviously, this idea has downsides too - I'm actually looking at a list of pros and cons here. But it could be something to address the challenge of people wanting to create safe (and fun!) discussion spaces. To be clear: I'm not visualizing all of Pinside becoming like this, but possibly a new section.

And finally, I have no idea how big this negativity problem really is. I do get occasional messages from people about it. But generally speaking, considering the amount of pageviews/visits Pinside gets, it doesn't seem a lot of people are that bothered. Or maybe just not enough to tell me about it. Or maybe they're used to it?

TLDR; Sometimes I wish we could simply go back to the less complicated and cozier Pinside of a few years ago. But on the other hand, I'm tremendously glad Pinside grew into this because it is a testament to the current popularity of pinball!

I think a lot of the people bothered by it just search for someplace else and hope it will be/stay better. Like the mentioned private chat group. Mostly because these "how can we be better at being kind to each other and come together over our shared interest" threads historically just go sideways fast and everything stays the same.

I would like to point out that this place is a lot more friendly to women than it used to be. Not quite as much frat bro "hur hur" crap and posts with lots of boobs.

So, there's been improvement.

You know, I always thought that the anonymity was the issue too. However, on Facebook - where most of the people are not anonymous, but posting under their real names - people still say terrible things. There are many websites that implement commenting via your Facebook account. Yet people are still keyboard warriors, typing out the most mean-spirited shit you could imagine.

So what is it about the internet that turns some people into assholes? That's the million dollar question and I'm sure the people at Twitter etc have looong board meetings about that.

As a guy who's observed for a couple months only, my opinions is obviously less informed than the veterans.

That being said I find pinside is what you make of it. I've met some awesome people that sold me my first machines, people willing to help me fix my finicky t-rex, taking time out of their day and a ton of people willing to post videos and experiences to help me

I also see the stern and jjp hating, but I just ignore it, like much of the internet. Hell I've been here 2 or three months and know which opinions I want to read and which I'm skimming.

Overall, I think the community is great if you can tune out the static. The good has FAR outweighed the negative for me

There's pretty near zero risk of being punched in the face immediately upon completion of whatever stupid thing you're firing off when the people are states away.

Here in the south they say opinions are like @$$holes, everyone’s got one, and they all stink!! If you don’t have anything nice to say, maybe don’t say it.

I’d like to think a lot of the negativity on here is manf. Bashers or specific game bashers but I’d point out that their are at least several threads on here currently that are often dumpster fires that are completely full of negativey towards other members of the Pinball community and pinsiders: coming to mind are the no rainbow puke club and the mod removers club. One “club” consists of taking examples from Facebook, for sales ads, etc, and making fun of and saying mean things about the owners machines / tastes. The other actively bashes mods made by members of the community, including mods advertised here.

I’m not saying you can’t have an opinion about LEDs or mods, but having whole clubs on pinside devouted to singling out owners machines or mods and bashing them — doesn’t seem very welcoming or “nice”.

Just a thought.. I wish people had more positive things to do / comment on but it’s just more entertaining to be generally negative I guess.

**now queue 10 people up to call me a snowflake and toughen up** lol

I'm sorry but this has to be a joke right? MapleSyrup username an icon that is a winter landscape and a moose, on here trying to be polite and bring us all together. This is a parody right, you're just taking the piss with us Canucks right?

Amen brother!

I like this thread a lot. The real humans I’ve met in pinball are amazing.

I will totally say this in person to my friends!

But strangers, no.

You can't really apply that to all people in the hobby, for a variety of reasons...

That said, you get what you give and if you're a nice guy, people will generally be nice back. However, the "haters" will tend to hang out with other "haters" at shows and snark the shit out of people, games, etc. amongst themselves. The problem here is we're all grouped together in one melting pot, so you'll get personality conflicts you wouldn't get in person.

This conversations right here is the most Canadian thing I've ever heard

I find this is the issue a lot of the time, at least with me. When you're part of an internet community you kind of act like you would in a real community; not holding things back.

This is an important thread and I hope some useful ideas are generated from it. My observation is that the negativity is very much based on the topic. If the topic is tech help or a how-to thread, folks are usually very appreciative and collaborative. If the thread is more about hypothetical games, supplier problems, or reviews of commercial products, people really like to throw rotten tomatoes.

I really get enjoyment and value from the tech help threads and tend to avoid the opinion threads.

Don't worry I hear the purge is going to take out the bad apples

I like the idea to vote people off.
If you get enough “go away” votes- your gone.
Everyone could only have one vote per individual person. You could even change your vote if you change your mind.
Only you could see your current number and type of votes.
If a majority of the people think you suck- your gone.
If you keep the number of votes it takes to make someone “go away” high enough, you would only eliminate the super trolls.
Sure, another super troll would take his/her place, but it could make the “occasional troll” in all of us think twice before posting.

I'm not in favor of and banning, voting people off the island, segregation of groups. All of this leads to people being excluded. Everyone has an ignore list please take advantage of it. I don't find a lot of negativity here. It's well below average for the internet and a damn sight better than other hobbies. The only thing that gets to me is the Stern defense force and the really obvious bashing. I think Stern deserves its fair share of criticism. The extreme everything they do is garbage vs the everything they do is amazing you should be thanking them, is what gets on my nerves. Oh and the extremes of price police, I don't mind a little mockery of a excessive price but the guys that magically get every pin for at least a grand less than even the sweetest score. Everything else is pretty good to go. Sure we have our fair share of old men yelling at clouds but I cut them some slack as I'm creeping into that category.

As I do agree with the majority of the problems discussed here, I must say I don’t mind some negative comments towards a manufacturer or game as long as it is bringing a potential problem to my attention. I do not agree with “all of brand X is garbage”, but do appreciate knowing what problems might arise if I’m purchasing a NIB game or any game for that matter. This is obviously a slippery slope that no thread about problems with a game has been able to handle. I do agree with its internet and not necessarily anonymity. A lot of people will say anything as long as they are not face to face. I think the only thing that can be done is to take the “a$$h*#%s” with a grain of salt and move to a different thread. Continuing a ridiculous argument with a troll does not help the thread.

Perfect example. https://pinside.com/pinball/forum/topic/pinball-has-dried-up-here

One of the DMD boys tried to bring his hate over to the EM forums this week. He got slapped with 46 additional down votes to add to his already accumulated 2,300 (you guys must not like him over there either). I felt bad for him at first, but then he appeared to be trolling us. It is as simple as this, if you dont collect or play EM's and there not your bag, don't comment.
We are a different breed in the EM Hangout. We are helpful and supportive of one another no matter what kind of machines we collect and play. I do read the other sections on occasion, and I am dumbfounded by how cruel so many people are to one another. - This is just my opinion.

unbelievable.

i did not hate on EMs. i said zero bad things about EMs. i said they were fun. I like EMs. i cannot not believe how hypersensitive you guys were when i was trying to be nice.

meanwhile, your post here is exactly the kind of post that goes out of its way to be dickish and hostile for no good reason. there's no way you are that big of an a-hole in real life.

Funny, same kind of language you used in the thread. Once again, I believe we made our point!

I dunno if that's accurate.
I mean, I kicked your ASS at TWD last night, pretty good.
: )

if the point is you guys are jerks, then message received. i have repeatedly tried to explain that i was trying to be nice and that i like EMs, but you guys have reacted with complete hostility and disdain -- going so far as to bring it up in another unrelated thread to further attack me again out of the blue.

i am not a troll.

and i'm not the one who brought your ridiculous beef to this thread.

Each of you think the other is a troll. Neither of you probably are. You both just disagree. Just don’t respond and move on. What does it matter what he thinks or what you think of him.

Cause it's the Internet and he's gotta have the last word

i DID cease responding until he brought it up on an entirely unrelated thread while pretending to be an aw shucks nice guy.

Don't ever mention thoughtfully that you would like it to or wonder if the Stern GOTG Premium/LE Groot arms move.....like I did.

This a great example of why I feel the downvote/upvote thing is a bad idea. It does nothing but create hatred and controversy toward each other which in return creates trolling and conflicts etc. I do not agree with hardly any of Pezpunks views, me and him are definitely on opposite sides of the tracks on just about every subject but he got downvoted for absolutely no reason in that thread other than the fact that people obviously do not like him for whatever reason and that is wrong. He was being nice and respectful seems to me like in that thread and a bunch of people ganged up on him for no reason and downvoted him trying to make him look bad.

This is the kind of nonsense that needs to stop on here and people should be moderated for abusing the downvote system in this situation here because they ARE the ones creating the hostile environment, NOT Pezpunk! Remember that #1 rule on here of “be nice”? The abuse of downvotes on Pezpunk not being nice at all. I’m sure that I will catch flack for this but I don’t care, right is right and wrong is wrong. Like I said, me and Pezpunk don’t have the same beliefs on hardly anything, but if he is respectful to me I will be respectful back and talk Pinball with him all day long if he wants.

I turned the voting feature off. If someone is really a problem, I ignore them.

You make many good points. I feel the same way on many of your concerns. The example of not liking Addams family is a case in point.

I have on ignore the main culprits.

Aerosmith is leaving in the morning and it's still got your GC on it.
Want people to be nicer to each other?
Stop pulling THAT $hit!