Being Positive

[Guillaume Piolat]

On Monday, 12 February 2018 at 23:54:29 UTC, Arun Chandrasekaran 
wrote:
> Sorry if I'm hurting someone's sentiment, but is it just me who 
> is seeing so much negative trend in the D forum about D itself? 
> I don't remember seeing so much negative about Rust on rust 
> forum and so on. Do you think it will help in reminding people 
> not to post any negative things? It shouldn't become strict 
> moderation, but at the same time, I really don't like seeing so 
> much negative trend. I would even go to the extent and suggest 
> to email Walter/Andrei in person (even if they don't agree) to 
> vent your frustration with D, but please don't post it on the 
> forum.

Several structural reasons for negativity (I'll be negative 
myself saying all that):

- It's an internet forum - and an addictive one - so each message 
has a bit of social standing at stake. Strong talk is thus 
mechanically encouraged, makes you appear strong and 
knowledgeable, like a big meeting room. It's common for internet 
forums to devolve into negativity.

- Because we don't ban people from the forums, some individuals 
that don't use D and have zero skin in the game come here to 
spread negativity at every occasion.

If you delve into the smaller D communitites they aren't 
especially negative, on the contrary. The forums are not the D 
community at large, it's an addictive subset of it. If the forums 
were _worse_ to use, we wouldn't have this problem.