It's time the games press stood up against hate speech, bullying and undesirables

Digitally Downloaded writes: "It's good to see the games media wake up to the fact that it doesn't need to tolerate incessant negativity and abusive language. It's not restricting freedom of speech to silence the "joking" male adolescents telling female gamers to get back into the kitchen. In fact, allowing those undesirables to bully female gamers to the point where they don't feel comfortable with leaving comments has a far greater impact on people feeling like they have the freedom to speak."

[Need4Game]

I'm not leaving much comment, to avoid hurting people's feelings.

[MattS]

If you can't leave a comment without hurting a person's feelings, perhaps you need to work on your articulation.

[Doctor_Freeman]

"It's time"

I've been taking a stand for years.

[Thepharaoh]

I feel like even if they did take action it still wouldn't make much of a difference.people in the gaming industry nowadays are far to arrogant stubborn and uncivil to really change their act.

[sovietsoldier]

the ps4 vs xbox one is a good way of getting a view of what go's on in the gaming community. i dont see why we all just cant get along and enjoy what were here for the games.

[admiralvic]

All those topics show is that "trolls" still exist in the gaming community. There are a lot of rational / fairly rational people that may be isolated / prefer one console to another, but most of the hate comes from two simple sources.

1) Some person who makes a stupid comment (usually Mika if you're on N4G...) with the sole intent of getting a rise out of people.
2) Sites putting fuel on the fire by making a worthless article in this area to get a lot of views. Don't believe it works? Just look at how well some of these articles do to more informed / well rounded / interesting topics on N4G and you'll understand why people do it.

If you read enough of these topics (even the ones on N4G), you might see some people disagreeing, but a lot of people are fairly civil till someone spouts some nonsense to aggravate a bunch of people.

[admiralvic]

While I know I will get a ton of disagrees, this crusade always ends in the ironic twist of the righteous being the new bullies. The simple fact is, the second you start to isolate / call out / be little or in any way insult the current "bullies", you're doing nothing more than bullying them in the guise of being righteous. Like I would love to see that stuff go away and I do stand up to some of it, but once you start to organize people to clean up the community you end up with awful things.

[iceman06]

THIS is what I was thinking as well. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The fact that he starts using the term UNDESIRABLES is enough to hint towards that end. Who does this policing? How? What is justified and what is not? Half the time, even on NG4, you never know what statement will "set someone off" because words can't always express intention. The type of article could suggest that you are a "fanboy" type just because you happen to agree with the premise. I am all for inclusion. I stay away from the fanboy stuff because it's just a waste of time and any mental energy. Maybe if the trolls aren't fed, then they will die of starvation!?!? Just a thought.

[360ICE]

I think the system here at N4G is pretty bad. It's shocking to see what gets marked as "trolling" for instance. A statement like "I'm going with Xbox One. It has more exclusives" could be disagreeable or even wrong, but then say THAT. It's not necessarily trolling just because you're frustrated enough to get upset.

Some intelligent, tolerant moderators with total control of that kind of thing would have been better. Or a smarter, nicer ommunity, but that is a far-fetched wish. Mind, many of you are nice, it's just that the people who aren't make a lot of themselves.

Btw, we can't moderate all the kitchen jokes. There goes half my material.

[admiralvic]

Part of the problem with the N4G system is that the mods / admins also police the comments and will put out flames by labeling some comments off topic or trolling.

A while back I actually lost a bubble because I said Krieg should have been free with the Season Pass (cause I don't think he is worth $10 dollars) in an article about things Krieg couldn't do next to the other vault hunters. This comment was flagged for being "off topic", so I brought it up with an Admin. Instead of saying something useful, he actually started to explain how my comments about his price was off topic and through our various PM's gave me the strong impression that an articles topic is a very literal and narrow concept and any deviation from this straight / narrow concept can result in you losing bubbles for being off topic. Like in that thread the topic was "Krieg glitches / problems" and apparently anything else could result in you being punished for being off topic.

[iceman06]

This is why the merit of this article is difficult to achieve. Without an all inclusive community, exclusion will happen...even by misinterpretation. I say jokes are fine, trolls are tolerable, personal attacks needs to be the limit. Restrictions should be placed on the name calling and personal attacks (not the labeling of who is a fanboy per se). At any rate, until there is a way to stop multiple accounts, the trolling and attacks will continue anyway. For me, I simply just remind myself that comments are from nameless, faceless people with opinions that have no real effect on my day to day life. Otherwise..."Why So Serious?"

[360ICE]

Yeah, agree. That should be rule nr 1. "Lighten up". Nothing going on anywhere at any time on this site is really worth getting that upset about.