Just came across something I consider very helpful for the problem of the tone of communication as a whole in the community. The inventor of StarCitizen, Chris Roberts posted this in the game’s forums. I’m quoting some of it.
A long read but absolutely worth it.
If you want to encourage […] developers to answer questions then it helps to not turn around and question people’s professionalism or make sweeping statements. If someone did that to you in your job I am sure it would be irritating.
You wouldn’t be putting this much time into something if you didn’t care, so why put energy into posting something that a developer will dismiss because it feels like an attack? I can tell you that being considerate of someone and treating them with respect will get you much further than than being dismissive. The development team reads these forums […] and the community’s feedback really helps, but the feedback that gets actioned on, that gets passed around internally and is discussed is the constructive type, not the overly negative type. Just saying something sucks isn’t helpful. Explaining why it sucks for that user, and their ideas to potentially rectify it is helpful. [emphasis added]
My biggest disappointment with modern internet discourse is that there’s a significant amount of cynicism, especially in forum or reddit debates, and a portion of people assume the worst. If a feature is missing, late or buggy it’s because the company or the developer lied and or / is incompetent as opposed to the fact that it just took longer and had more problems than the team thought it would when they originally set out to build it. [emphasis added]
Developers by their very nature are optimistic. You have to be to build things that haven’t ever been built before. Otherwise the sheer weight of what is needed to be done can crush you. But being optimistic or not foreseeing issues isn’t the same as lying or deliberately misleading people
I don’t like pathos, but:
Fellow Sailors, let’s take this to heart! 