I'm afraid that it's only going to be happening more often as the Pandora's audience expands, unless a new rule is added to the list of current ones of course, and even then there'll more than likely be sporadic outbreaks.
Hm, I can see we're generally thinking alike in this regard.
Of course off-topic is not a bad thing if it's not so excessive that it can become annoying (and even then it sometimes is still a positive thing). I understand why you see my comment as being rather hard going, because yes, that's what it was! (And boy, did it appear to be based on a single incident!) If this was just about me, I wouldn't even have commented at all. But I'm not the only one here, and the problem with 'negative' comments such as mine above is that they're often a hassle for those who write them -- too easily, such comments are not taken seriously, are being seen as 'harsh', or are disregarded for being an outbreak of insanity, when actually all they do is just to summarize what someone else is experiencing.
So yes, you're right that I think people should 'complain' more (that doesn't mean one has to be rude or childish, as you've just proven with your 'complaint'!), but the actual problems come when complaints aren't really possible because people don't think about criticism in an objective manner. The paragraph
On Not Reacting Like A Loser in the linked document somewhat explains why this can be deadly for technical forums.
In this forum here, both technical discussions as well as general chatter from people interested in the Pandora are taking place, so people need to be careful to make sure that the forum at the very least doesn't go out of balance. That sounds like a status that's not achievable because not everyone follows all rules, but it is somewhat achievable exactly because it's not necessary to have rules for this: What's accepted behavior in a community by definition fluidly adapts based on each individual community member's behavior. So when
someone informs you that she thinks editing other people's texts when quoting them is "misleading", and you
do it again, I need to complain too if I think editing quotes without making it very clear is extremely bad manner (which I do).
The bottom line? Well, I guess it's that we should all hate each other more.
Either that, or that people should all sometimes talk to each other in a way like we two just did. Face-to-face, people do this frequently because it helps with ...everything(?), but in online forums it often first appears to blow things out of proportion (when actually it keeps things from going completely awry in the future - see some of the recent threads).
