I'm out of town, so all I know about what has gone on is what is posted here. And again, I am not advocating for flame, he was irresponsible and drp took his powers away, rightfully so.
My point here is that flame isn't the only obnoxious and rude person here. I can be obnoxious and rude. And I won't name names, but there are a lot of users with less than splendid attitudes or behaviour at times. But when flame is around everyone puts on their sophistication pants and take offense at the smallest of things. It's dumb and annoying to deal with.
Worse is that no one lets him have his opinion on anything. I'm looking a t a few particular users here. Flame says something you disagree with, you spend the next ten minutes arguing, essentially having egged him on, then complain about how he argued. It's the pattern reflected in that chat log, a pattern constantly occurring.
Our community is incapable of dealing with problems like adults. The swaty affair was the same way. You won't just ignore it and move on. You'd rather make an ass of yourself and our community trying to get someone who isn't a problem until you make them one, banned. It's stupid. You act like utter morons and wonder why all our mature members left.
It's because, quite sadly, our userbase has gone from a group of mature members dedicated to mapping and with a serious interest in level design to a party of dramatic babies who can't deal with shit they don't like. I have a little story I like to tell about a forum I joined early 2008, whose prominent members went by names like Mangy and Youme. These people were generally abrasive but highly talented mappers. And I didn't whine about them being dicks, I made friends with them, knowing how valuable a friendship with people like them could be. Youme was a huge help for me when I was working on Stovepipe, Mangy is still abrasive as hell to this day but he knows what he is talking about.
I credit me getting as far as I have in this community by putting personalities aside. I'd be nowhere without my relations with prominent community figures.
My opposite was Chrono, whom I doubt any of you know of, but he joined a while before me and pretty much spent every day until he ragequit tf2 fighting about youme's attitude. And then me, as I rose through the ranks of the community while he sat the bottom, unable to deal with one person's bad attitude.
Even today my friends list is still composed of people who I may or may not care for in one way or another, but are valuable contacts. And it's easy to see the rewards of my networking, it's the secret behind my success and the answer to the circulating question of why I am where I am when I have little product to back up my position n this community and others.
I probably just burnt down what I have spent two and a half years building to make a point, and I hope it is worth it. But I have a sad feeling the community won't change. It has been going downhill for the past year at an alarming rate.
I guess that's just the sad effect of growth.