True, Dain, true. I had to listen to myself, we tend to grativate towards the negative..
I regret you leaving these forums, as your opinion is an interesting one and I would love to read it more often.

I agree with your last post a lot, Raven. I might have said otherwise, but when one says "stop/could you treat me differently" you are obliged to listen. Respect a person's wishes about how to be treated. That is a form of respect.

I have said my say, the die have been cast.

"But in the end it’s only a passing thing, this shadow; even darkness must pass." – Samwise Gamgee

In the same way that calling for civility is not a call to end challenge, calling for thicker skin is not a call to end civility.

The other forums are terrible. I'll go there like a week since I last visited and there will be little to nothing new at all.

People make constant mistakes with rules etc and then often no one corrects them. They rarely discover intricate combos or have great deck ideas as compared to those on here. Yes there is little to no argument or "flame wars" but that is because they are not as passionate, obssesed or invested as many of the people on these forums. I am not however defending any of the aggressive or nasty actions on this forum, just giving my opinion as to why none of this exists on the other forums and how that does not make them superior in any way, they are boring and lifeless to me personally and the vast majority of content is just people posting decks or people wanting to meet up as opposed to discussion about spoilers, rules, ideas, custom cards etc.

I have to say that the BGG forums are definitely miles and miles better than Cardgamedb or the reddit forum but still incomparable to these forums.

I agree with much that has been said about the good things of this forum never being talked about (post a rules question on one of the other forums and see how long it takes to get a detailed explanation then do it on here and see how long it takes!) and these forums are definitely the place to go for newer players that need help. There are several members on here that constantly help out newer players as much as they can and I try to do my best to help new players on occasion with rules questions as well but never seen to be as fast, patient or intricate with my replies as a few certain other people.

I actually messaged our own Slothgodfather on the cardgame db forums because he was posting quite a bit of content and clever deck ideas, suggestions, ideas etc and little to no one was responding to his topics/posts. I suggested maybe he should participate in the official forums on FFG because he seems quite invested in the game and seems like a good player with a lot of interesting decks, things to say etc. Since then I have seen him on here quite a fair bit and he is always replied to. He gets to actually actively discuss the game now whenever he wants and is quite an active part of this community now. No longer are there posts by him that just go unanswered and ignored on cardgamedb but instead he is on here involved in many discussions some of which his some of which others have started. I obviously don't want to speak for someone else or put words in his mouth or anything and if I am wrong in any way I do hope he corrects me but he seems way way better off as a member of these forums than of cardgamedb (I'm sure he still posts on there as well obviously) with or without the aggressive behaviour that takes place on here sometimes.

I think that these forums get way too much of a bad rep and honestly it is usually several key people that are the source of the majority of disagreements that are not civil or end up being "flame wars" and most definitely not the community as a whole. So long as we either ignore these users when they get too nasty or simply report them when they do get out of hand we can easily keep it under control. Remember when we had boooored and trololo just causing chaos regularly? People reported them, they got banned and we no longer had to put up with them. Then we had a really peaceful period for a long time. If people get out of control again I'm sure that either the moderators or us as a community will deal with it.

Just one last thing, not sure why people are so proud of not ever reporting anyone and that they never would...

If we want the community to stay polite, respectful and under control why would we not report abusive or nasty members...?

Clearly they are not going to change their entire personality, approach to communication and beliefs just because we tell them to stop and that they are jerks/trolls. I have reported a few people back in the day and am very proud that I did!

The moderators do patrol the forums but probably not as much as we think so we need to make them aware of behaviour that breaks the rules of the forums and not just ignore it and hope it goes away...

^ instant candidate for best post ever ^

I'll try to add a bit of humor to this situation:

Early last year, I was growing frustrated with booored's behavior on the forums. However, at that time, I did not think anything he had done warranted an outright ban. Instead I decided to reach out to a moderator and try to start a conversation about what we could do as a community to resolve the situation that would not result in an outright ban. So, I selected a moderator at random, sent a PM, and this is the email response that I was sent a short while later:

"I'm writing in response to a recent PM sent to FFG's CEO Christian Petersen. In the future, please use the Report to Moderator button in the forum to communicate with the forum admins."

Whoops...

Hahaha nice one!