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[Thatdude]

And I think that it takes a better person to post in the upper forums. Why would they be called the upper forums in the first place?  (just kidding)

But the main reason why most people are nice is because my friend's reaction to the dwarf fortress main page. Seeing all that bare asci broke his mind...

[Gatleos]

Most people start out in the upper forums and migrate down below later on. So it's probably just that DF has some sort of pacifying effect that either smites or calms all who come within a certain radius of the upper forums.

Then again, even the lower forums are a lot better behaved than some other forums I've seen.

[Flying Dice]

Probably what also helps, apart from the learning cliff, is the fact that DF is a.) free and b.) single-player (barring metagaming, successions, and so forth), meaning that the quality of the experience is based solely on the ability to have fun with the game and interact successfully with other forumgoers, rather than on the rather insane heated level of competition that is the core of a lot of other games.

[Aquillion]

Also it may be the general aura spread by Toady and the lack of "evil moderators". For example, even in worst cases Toady only deletes "bad posts" and gives polite warnings.

I suspect that the fact that Toady moderates this board personally has a lot to do with it.  Obviously, any fan of DF is going to respect him already, but more than that, I think most people realize that if you cause enough trouble on the board to make Toady respond, all you're doing is calling him away from Dwarf Fortress.  Nobody here wants that, so...

[elitepastafa]

Ugh, the Minecraft forums used to be actually halfway decent. Players might get into occassional arguments, but nothing too bad. And then someone linked it on Penny Arcade...then Something Awful....then 4chan. Griefing went through the roof, and now I can't even look at the forums for info. Blech.

Ummmmm, anyways, yeah, probably because the worst people from places like those can't take the learning cliff.

[thvaz]

I vow for the end of the "Finally..." section of this forum. Most of its users are people who seldom play DF anymore, and it gives Toady only headaches.

[knaveofstaves]

Probably what also helps, apart from the learning cliff, is the fact that DF is a.) free and b.) single-player

I think these three points are correlated. To be kind, multi-player games have to be appealing to a broad audience, so no learning cliff; at their worst, multi-player games are content-generation traps in which player activity is monetized, sold to other players as a "game".

And that all three -- difficult, free, single-player -- are correlated with "good", a bad game couldn't survive being those things.

[Deon]

Basicly, the upper forums is where people talk about the game.  Its the lower forums where the nastiness happens.

Huh. That's probably why the community appears so nice. I never had the inclination to talk about anything other than the game.

There are lower forums? Bah. Really, I am in top 10 posters, and I think I haven't visited the "lower forums" for months. If I want to talk about something but DF, I can always find other forums.

[Deon]

Ugh, the Minecraft forums used to be actually halfway decent. Players might get into occassional arguments, but nothing too bad. And then someone linked it on Penny Arcade...then Something Awful....then 4chan. Griefing went through the roof, and now I can't even look at the forums for info. Blech.

Ummmmm, anyways, yeah, probably because the worst people from places like those can't take the learning cliff.

I think the main problem with Minecraft is that it can be multiplayer. A lot of "griefing" and badmouthing comes from there.

[Desdichado]

I vow for the end of the "Finally..." section of this forum. Most of its users are people who seldom play DF anymore, and it gives Toady only headaches.

Well, the Various Nonsense section did get that treatment years ago. I rarely went there, but its repute was basically as a burgeoning colony of 4chan... and nothing of value was lost.

Also, this forum has a unique form of annoyance. It gets some pretty hilarious sycophants that will attack any remotely similar game and worry about other games syphoning off Toady's revenue. See my sig for reference. "Goblin Camp" drove people loony for a while on this board.

I'm a denizen of the middle planes, myself. Other Games. I get most of my new gaming leads from there.

[Waterbreath]

I think this effect is a mixture of two things:

- DF players are somewhat dwarvish in themselves, they bend down under hardships and pull through, but stand together and enjoy helping each other, knowing each one has been in some calamity or other
- The common enemy!

[Angel Of Death]

The forums do have immature times, it's just that it's less than other forums.

[Oliolli]

- DF players are somewhat dwarvish in themselves, they bend down under hardships and pull through, but stand together and enjoy helping each other, knowing each one has been in some calamity or other

It's just the dwarven communal thing. They even have some sort of a hive-mind, and once you start playing Dwarf Fortress and register onto these forums, you get connected to the hive-mind, without any way of disconnecting yourself from it.

[Karnewarrior]

It's the fact that due to the difficulty a tradition of helping new people started and something like that simply will not stop. And if you're civil to the new people you're civil to the old as well, and there's just a loop of civility here.

Note I didn't say "mature", just civil. We're all like kindergarteners inside, we just share our cookies.

[metime00]

Oh man, you guys talking about how much better we are than other forums made me want to go answer newbie questions in the adventure mode forums and actually live up to our standards