This could just be me, but I'm seeing a big uptake on hypercritical comments and aggressive downvoting lately here. It's like there's a cadre of power users trying to make a name for themselves by being mean to others.
Can we do something to make this forum fun again?
I think you're over-generalizing and looking at a single data point (user).
This is also a user (nb: I am not referring to you here, but the user who this event unfolded around) who has had ... issues ... on other sites in our network.
I would also add that a hallmark of such users is that bad things tend to happen around them, all the time, non-stop.
As Jeff said, there is one particular user who is, I think, the root cause of these problems — posting things which really don’t belong on the site, being very quick to take a confrontational tone, etc.
However, there’s a knock-on effect from this too: everybody else (especially the most active users) gets a lot of grief from ‘firefighting’ against this user’s questions, and so there’s a lot more frustration and crabbiness going around, and on a small site like this, there’s not as much room for that frustration to dissipate as there is on eg stackoverflow or serverfault.
So… I think everyone, especially the power users (I guess I see myself as on the fringes of that category at the moment), can probably help by trying to respond positively as well as negatively to the problems. In a nutshell:
(…of course, this is advice I’m directing at myself here as much as at anyone else…)
[Note: I will not comment on the general atmosphere on this website—just on criticism and correcting fellow users.]
[Note 2: All mention of "a single user", "one user", "this user", etc. is not about you, @Smithco! I can assure you of that. I think this all rests on a terrible misunderstanding.]
I can understand why you didn't like FX_'s comment on your translation of a French phrase (you mentioned this comment in your comment above). It was not essential to your answer, and criticism is never a pleasant thing to receive. However, I'd have done exactly the same as FX_ did. The fact that something is "unfriendly" does not make it bad: criticism is always a bit unfriendly, but it is often healthy. Do you propose that we should never criticise here? I believe that correcting errors, even small ones, improves the general quality of our website.
I have been criticised many times, and I have tried to correct my answers whenever I felt the criticism was right, or when I felt that it was polite to show a willingness to agree that perhaps I could have phrased my answer in a better way. I have never taken it to mean "you are stupid, and this small error proves that you should not be on this website", but rather "I am a geek and an OCD perfectionist; hey, why else do you think I am on this very website?". I correct other users too, and I do hope and assume that they take my criticism the same way.
There are times when I read an answer that contains a quirky factoid, one that makes me wonder "huh, is that really true?". Sometimes this factoid is challenged by someone in a comment; this usually entails a detailed explanation of why it is wrong, and some voting on the comment, or assent or dissent of other users. Such a discussion is to me an important source of information, much more helpful than mere up and down votes. When I am reading a certain question, it is only natural that I should be interested in those things that others discuss in the context of this answer.
If I see that some experienced users have commented on an answer but they have not "corrected" the quirky factoid, I usually assume that they agree with it, and that I was wrong.
This is why comments are such an important feature of SE: discussion is an indispensable tool in the formation and communication of knowledge. It is a pity that those who founded the SE sites should disagree and even make comments less usable on purpose. Perhaps they will one day be swayed.
@smithco, please see this question, and this one, and this one.
Oh, and this one too (edit, I just found this, and this too).
And this one.
I think I'll stop there. Have you noticed a common theme yet?
(Just a thought: if you've really got time, just trawl your way through this list.)
What would you be rather spending your time on: questions/answers like that, or the real business of EL&U?
Most of us want this site to prosper; we enjoy answering quality, genuine, on-topic questions about English Language & Usage. We're even not averse to the occasional fun or border-line questions. But repeated naff questions from users with whom we - or others - may already have had run-ins with - here or elsewhere - inevitably get very short thrift.
The absolute worse thing is that in the process of trying to protect the site from this kind of destructive activity, moderators will always initially avoid outright bans or suspensions. Which means that the problem questions keep coming, and getting closed, which (ironically) ends up scaring off people like you, and comforting conspiracy-theorists in their paranoia. This makes the troll-type activity doubly deleterious.
In short, in future when you see moderator activity that worries you, the first thing to do is to check out the user profile of the post in question. You can also pop into chat and ask anyone who's there to explain.
