I wanted to discuss some other the other wargaming forums, mainly some of the non-lotr focused ones. I think one-ring, regardless of the LOTR focus, remains the best and friendliest forum online. Speaking from a mix of some personal experience and a mixture of what I've witnessed others going through, I'd like talk about how horrible the internet can be.

I shall not name any of the forums but the first isn't so bad, I am still a member. However, this forum likes to dish out warning levels and edit members post trigger happy. Like some sort of moderator power trip within their own little bubble of the internet, as a PCSO in training - this actually makes me laugh a little, oh what I would give to let them out of their cave and see their first ray of daylight.

The second forum on the list doesn't suffer from the above problem but isn't really wargaming focused. Quite the opposite in fact it is chocked full of spam and nonsense threads such as "What if Elvis was still alive and living on the moon", "What should I have for tea?" or posts talking about current affairs in the "GW Only" forum. A little bit of chaos.

Finally, a forum that disgusted me to the point I left. This happened very recently. Last night I was browsing the work in progress logs of this particular forum and commented on a young chap doing his first few Uruk-Hai, now this forum is very focused on 40K so I was pleased to see a LOTR player. I welcomed him to the hobby and commented that its great to see that beginners enthusiasm, he seemed happy. Admittedly the paint jobs weren't very good, but he was just starting out. I told him that he could use drybrushing to create a good metallic effect just to get the conversation ball rolling.

I checked back a couple hours later and there were 4 or 5 "flaming" posts, despite the forum rules banning such behavior. I was upset to read one guy's post ripping in to the beginner, telling him he was terrible, a disgrace to the hobby and with skills that he shouldn't bother and should use a painting service to get to any decent gaming standard. I was shocked! What horrible words, and most people round here game with unpainted models anyway! This continued and the poor chap simply put ":(" as his next post. I contacted the admins via PM and received the reply "what do you expect me to do about it?" - Loosing faith I was going to go back to the thread and send the kid a PM to let him know he shouldn't give up and should come over here to onering where he will be welcomed with open arms.

I found the thread completely deleted along with the kid's forum account, not a trace. I hope he isn't too depressed or down-hearted and I hope to the heavens he doesn't give up the hobby over a couple of horrible keyboard warriors. Frustrated I checked the comments on a few of my older threads on this forum, I found somebody flaming me too! Calling my business a "joke" because I couldn't ship to the U.S, insulting our monthly newsletter, somebody else claiming my painting service was "fake" and a "probably a cheap knock off using somebody else". I was despairing at this point (although I don't know whether that last part indicates good skills on our painting part). Having already tried to contact the admins to resolve the issues, I simply deleted everything and left the forum. I have not the time now the energy for a horrible fetid place on the internet like that, where evil is allowed to breed.

My thoughts are now shared, I am sure you will be a little upset by the story of the Uruk-Hai kid as well, and if anybody can reach out to this kid somehow on any other forum bring him over. Let him know that this is a wonderful hobby with hundreds of helpful people. At the end of the day, I think there are just some nasty people out there. I've only to my knowledge encountered one hostile customer and that was a chap who wasn't happy his order was delayed by Hermes one day longer than I originally estimated, the issue was resolved in a professional manner and compensation offered (but rejected) and I still took in my fair share of uncalled for swear words from the guy.

In these instances you just breathe a sigh of relief and move on, as I have done here. Returning to a forum I can call "my internet home" (seriously, its better than facebook). I'd like to know if anybody on this forum has any similar experiences they'd like to share? And apologies for any typos, this is my longest post yet I think!

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.

Haters are gonna hate. It is an unfortunate part of life. I've had other forums in the past comment about how a blindfolded chimp could sculpt better than me. It is mean and not in the least constructive but thankfully heavily the minority. 90% of my reviews are positive, 9% constructive and 1% negative. So you just have to ignore the bad stuff. It obviously makes the troll feel a bit more powerful in his own pathetic life. You can never please all of the people all of the time. That is something I've learned.

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You don't have to be great to start. But you do have to start to be great.

Interesting read, very saddened for the young Uruk-Hai lad. Personally I think you need to name the forums, people should know the horrible and un-welcoming sites so they don't waste their time supporting them.
I myself was accused of 'flaming' recently on another LOTR site, my intentions were good but the dictatorship remains.
Fortunately I discovered my one-ring account which I had long forgotten about and now it is by far my favourite! Everybody to their own opinion though, some may feel other sites are better but I personally think that one-ring has the friendliest and most helpful community, I have seen no 'flaming'. If I have any questions I come here!

Whats the general feeling, shall I name and shame said forums or leave it generic?

Quite right ukfb, you can please some of the people some of the time and that is that. Fortunately, I feel I please the right kind of people. I certainly won't bend over backwards for these flamers.

Just to clarify, Uruk-Hai lad certainly not me, mine remain very much unpainted and awaiting work in the backlog queue!! I applaud any efforts in this hobby, wish I knew how to contact the kid.

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.

I am a member on Gtaforums, and there is an absurd amount of insults, flming, silly topics, etc. Mainly because Gta V has been delayed until SEPTEMBER 17TH. But still.

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I'm the good and the bad; you must be the ugly
I'd mess up your face but your momma did it for me!

Yes, please name the forums, so we don't accidentally join them ourselves

Personally I think you're fine posting the name of the forums simply because it may prevent someone here from stumbling on it.

I used to run a BBS back when “online communities” were made up from dial-up connections, FidoNet and ASCII art connected the world at 1200baud. Even then, when there was a good chance you knew all your users IRL, there were people that would be total jerks online but would never act like that face to face. It’s one of the ugliest aspects of virtual worlds and has gotten far worse in my opinion as we grew to global communities where people feel no need to maintain social standards at all.

If an admin or group of admins wants their little place on the net to be a mess of insults, attitude, profanity then they really should make that clear so people can just avoid the place if they choose. I won’t hang around people I consider jerks in real life, I don’t see a reason to do it virtually. The nice advantage of online communities in this respect is if you start seeing attitude like that and the admin/moderator doesn't care or do anything, you simply remind yourself that it really is THEIR problem, that their social failures will hopefully mean they won’t breed and therefore reduce the ‘jerk gene’ in the human race, and go find someplace else. It’s easy to let these encounters burn or hurt but hopefully the person that was on the receiving end will just scratch that board off their list and keep looking until they find a place like this.

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

Lol sorry Steve - overpowered trigger happy mod here - I'd rather that we didn't start a thread naming other forums and pulling apart their faults. Lets not get into that The One Ring are far better than that i think. Sure other forums have their bad points and feel free to discuss the in the thread but lets keep the names out of it guys, there are unfriendly eyes everywhere and lets not give these people a reason to jump on our forum and cause problems.

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Good point.

I guess if someone is already here and looking for even MORE they could always just ask for recommendations. That way it stays on the positive side of things...

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Wait ye the finish! The fight is not yours.
Beowulf

http://TacticsInMiniature.com

100% agree, wasn't sure I should have posted in the first place for those reasons.

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.

Let's hope this kid could will join us !

Nah, I'm sure you feel better having got it off your chest and certainly no harm done. There are pretty unpleasant forums out there, or at least certain sections of otherwise good forums that are best avoided.

As you say, hope the guy didn't get totally disillusioned after the ott comments.

and your PSCO in training comment made me smile

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I just want to add that I completely agree - although I don't often post much, I find One Ring and the Lead Adventure Forum to be the nicest and most supportive forums on the whole internet. Well done, all of you!

I've noticed that LotR forums in general (O-R, TLA and the Palantir, as well as the LotR part of gwhobby.net) don't do this, as a rule. While in youtube, people will go berserk over you liking a song. Any explanation for this?

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"... Telchar wrought it in the deeps of time."
-On Andùril, The Lord of the Rings

I agree, and I will extend this to people on youtub spoiling things on say GoT, or Hobbit etc clips. Just to spiteful,. Things like "You know Thorin dies in the last movie right"

Also, I've never hgeard the term "flaming" in that sernse before, I'm glad it doesn't happen around here.

Does anyone know if Last Alliance is friendly enogh? because I thought of sgning up there but haven't yet.

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"I am the Flying Spagetti Monster. Thou shall have no other monsters before me"
-FSM.

I agree that it's not particularly useful to 'name and shame' other forums so I'll just say this:

I'm a member of 2 other wargaming forums, one LOTR based and one generic GW and I rarely post in either of those any more. One Ring is, IMO, the friendliest forum by far, there is often animated discussion and disagreement but rarely does anything become mean spirited. By contrast the other two are far more likely to spark conflict if you express a differing opinion to an established member. One because there seems to be an overwhelming attitude of 'I know better than you' which I felt dissuaded new members and the other because there seems to be an overt feeling of pessimism and positive comments about figures, rules etc. are often greeted with derision.

I'm a really big fan of this place, long may it continue.

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Yes and no, I started on TLA and met a good bunch of gamers but gradually converted to One-Ring. I still regularly check TLA but once you have experienced one-ring TLA doesn't have much to offer. People often post the same articles or posts on both sites so alot of things are just recycled back and forth. I would not discourage joining TLA in anyway but I do not think that you will gain anything apart from an alternate web design and slower responses (in comparison). I have noticed that most threads are slightly off topic nowadays and end up being a price/inflation bust-up.

As of right now O-R has almost everything that TLA has, and more. There are some wip's on TLA that I check, (sithious') because he's not on O-R. Sign up, and see if you like it. If you don't, then don't go on. If you make an account you're not promising to be an active member for the next five years....

I go there from time to time and enjoy it. I don't pay much attention to the hobby threads so I don't know what they're like. The army building threads tend to be very much about competition, and less to do with theme or other aesthetic considerations. I think that's because several consistent GT winners hang out there. Lots of good tips to be found and then adapted to my more "let's have fun, I don't care if I win" style of play.

Television news, newspapers, radio shows and a variety of new websites and blogs have pondered the rise in the frequency and vehemence of vicious comments directed at people on social media, on forums, on feedback responses to new articles.
I have what is a ridiculously simplistic theory regarding these things. In part it is people believing that they can say anything they want online, and there will be no truly negative consequences for that - yes, they can be banned or blocked but there are simple ways around that. Typing or texting abuse at someone who lives on the other side of the world is, in their little minds, so much less risky that saying it to your face. The funny thing is, many employers and recruitment agencies are datamining like mad for this kind of stuff now - a lot of online bullies are going to discover that their rants and rages can have consequences that will affect their careers for a very, very long time.
I have minor painting skills, some aptitude for scratch building and no clue regarding sculpting, so I enjoy seeing the wealth of talent that is manifest here, year after year. It is great to see people developing their skills from even the most humble beginnings. O-R has always had a bit of banter and playful madness (mea culpa there folks), and that adds to the joys of being here. Just enjoy it, learn from it. It's good to see some people hooking up for games at mutually accessible locations.
This is the only Middle-earth site for me. Long may it last!

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