Your forums are filled with trolls and grifters using emotionally charged words to provoke negative responses

[Fredwick]

Your forums are filled with trolls and grifters using emotionally charged words to provoke negative communication loops. Maybe you should go after those who post "Your favorite game sucks, has low sales numbers, YIKES" threads instead of people like me who log onto Steam to find joy and are fed up with walking away irritated.

There isn't an option to completely disable discussion boards, if a user is blocked, their posts still show up as "a topic by a blocked user" with hundreds of replies. So it's not easy to not engage with toxic behavior like that. People naturally want to right the wrongs.

I know you're probably underpaid for moderating thousands of games' discussion forums, but I think the problem persists and will only make your job harder since organized efforts to defame a game and offend communities have been normalized by groups like DEI Detected, etc.

Your platform needs an overhaul and let users downvote posts that are blatantly negative and provokative (maybe hidden if past a certain threshold). This way the community promotes quality content instead of rage-baits and hatred.

[Gwarsbane]

As mentioned in EVER other thread on the topic of "add up vote/down vote" which you could have read by using the search feature, trolls would LOVE to down vote people they dislike and get all their troll friends to also down vote people they dislike.

Oh and its super easy to avoid the forums just stop coming to them. If you can't control yourself enough to do that, then there is nothing Valve could provide to help you, because if you can turn it back on, you will. If you can't turn it back on, there will be LOTS of people screaming to steam support to turn it back on after they "accidentally" activate it to see what its like, or annoying sibling turns it on, or a hijacker gets in and turns it on or what ever reason.


If you really want a way to stop coming to the forums, and you have the self control to not edit a file afterward, look up how to edit a host file to block a website. Just remember though, blocking steamcommunity could break other things that you want to use so use at your own risk.

[Fredwick]

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

As mentioned in EVER other thread on the topic of "add up vote/down vote" which you could have read by using the search feature, trolls would LOVE to down vote people they dislike and get all their troll friends to also down vote people they dislike.

Oh and its super easy to avoid the forums just stop coming to them. If you can't control yourself enough to do that, then there is nothing Valve could provide to help you, because if you can turn it back on, you will. If you can't turn it back on, there will be LOTS of people screaming to steam support to turn it back on after they "accidentally" activate it to see what its like, or annoying sibling turns it on, or a hijacker gets in and turns it on or what ever reason.


If you really want a way to stop coming to the forums, and you have the self control to not edit a file afterward, look up how to edit a host file to block a website. Just remember though, blocking steamcommunity could break other things that you want to use so use at your own risk.

Thanks for this response-

I think It’s up to Valve what sort of community they want to foster and I’m here to complain about my negative experiences.

I do realize a lot of toxic folks call this place home despite my wish that this is something more wholesome.

Lately, anti-Indiana-Jones grifters got me really irritated because they were spreading malicious lies and attempting to destroy this game. I then realize I can’t really just leave Steam just like I did with twitter and facebook.

Maybe we need to stop giving in to these people and resorting to leaving them alone.

[Gwarsbane]

Originally posted by Fredwick:

Originally posted by Gwarsbane:

As mentioned in EVER other thread on the topic of "add up vote/down vote" which you could have read by using the search feature, trolls would LOVE to down vote people they dislike and get all their troll friends to also down vote people they dislike.

Oh and its super easy to avoid the forums just stop coming to them. If you can't control yourself enough to do that, then there is nothing Valve could provide to help you, because if you can turn it back on, you will. If you can't turn it back on, there will be LOTS of people screaming to steam support to turn it back on after they "accidentally" activate it to see what its like, or annoying sibling turns it on, or a hijacker gets in and turns it on or what ever reason.


If you really want a way to stop coming to the forums, and you have the self control to not edit a file afterward, look up how to edit a host file to block a website. Just remember though, blocking steamcommunity could break other things that you want to use so use at your own risk.

Thanks for this response-

I think It’s up to Valve what sort of community they want to foster and I’m here to complain about my negative experiences.

I do realize a lot of toxic folks call this place home despite my wish that this is something more wholesome.

Lately, anti-Indiana-Jones grifters got me really irritated because they were spreading malicious lies and attempting to destroy this game. I then realize I can’t really just leave Steam just like I did with twitter and facebook.

Maybe we need to stop giving in to these people and resorting to leaving them alone.

Adding a + and - to each post will not do what you think it will do. Just look at the chaos the stupid awards have brought. People screaming about being insulted because they were given a jester or some other award they don't like. People complain about the awards and then toxic people keep giving them awards to rial them up because they think its funny. Valve was really dumb to include the awards, which also caused even more spam than we already had, which again gets people screaming about farming threads, which then gets the trolls out giving them jesters. People just can't seem to just ignore awards.

Again you do not need to use the forums of Steam, you can easily just avoid them. I avoid most of them unless I'm looking for a specific answer and google sends me there. Or I pipe up, asking a dev something or posting about some sort of error I got.


Oh and I forgot to mention this earlier, Valve already had what you suggested on their old forums.... it was heavily abused then (which makes me wonder why they thought awards would be different) and when they made the new forums, they didn't include the + and - on the posts because of how heavily abused by trolls they were. So thats another reason why they are not going to make a return.

[D. Flame]

Reddit already proved that downvoting is a failed system. It just turns things into a mindless echo chamber.

[The End]

Originally posted by Fredwick:

Your forums are filled with trolls and grifters using emotionally charged words to provoke negative communication loops...

Yes that, and those who constantly creates bait-threads about conspiracy theories and moderating and how bad they think it is? You are right way to much of that imo. permanent ban main and alts would slow that stuff down.

Originally posted by Fredwick:

Your platform needs an overhaul and let users downvote posts...

No, that would only make the problem worse. Award-farming is bad enough as it is.

[Psymon²]

Originally posted by Fredwick:

Your forums are filled with trolls and grifters using emotionally charged words to provoke negative communication loops. Maybe you should go after those who post "Your favorite game sucks, has low sales numbers, YIKES" threads instead of people like me who log onto Steam to find joy and are fed up with walking away irritated.

There isn't an option to completely disable discussion boards, if a user is blocked, their posts still show up as "a topic by a blocked user" with hundreds of replies. So it's not easy to not engage with toxic behavior like that. People naturally want to right the wrongs.

I know you're probably underpaid for moderating thousands of games' discussion forums, but I think the problem persists and will only make your job harder since organized efforts to defame a game and offend communities have been normalized by groups like DEI Detected, etc.

Your platform needs an overhaul and let users downvote posts that are blatantly negative and provokative (maybe hidden if past a certain threshold). This way the community promotes quality content instead of rage-baits and hatred.

accurate assessment.

but valve don't care about the forums at all.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Crazy Tiger]

Nah, downvotes on posts and such don't make things better. Just look at Reddit.

[Phénomènes Mystiques]

I get Jestered a lot when I am giving advice and facts, idk if I want to see a down-voting option.

[rawWwRrr]

Originally posted by WinterSolstice:

I get Jestered a lot when I am giving advice and facts,

Nice. Free points!

[John Henry Eden]

longly worded leftist post disguised as a moderate post, nothing to see here

[Unicorn Slayer]

Originally posted by Psymon²:

Originally posted by Fredwick:

Your forums are filled with trolls and grifters using emotionally charged words to provoke negative communication loops. Maybe you should go after those who post "Your favorite game sucks, has low sales numbers, YIKES" threads instead of people like me who log onto Steam to find joy and are fed up with walking away irritated.

There isn't an option to completely disable discussion boards, if a user is blocked, their posts still show up as "a topic by a blocked user" with hundreds of replies. So it's not easy to not engage with toxic behavior like that. People naturally want to right the wrongs.

I know you're probably underpaid for moderating thousands of games' discussion forums, but I think the problem persists and will only make your job harder since organized efforts to defame a game and offend communities have been normalized by groups like DEI Detected, etc.

Your platform needs an overhaul and let users downvote posts that are blatantly negative and provokative (maybe hidden if past a certain threshold). This way the community promotes quality content instead of rage-baits and hatred.

accurate assessment.

but valve don't care about the forums at all.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

if Valve didn't care abotu the forums then they wouldn't be repeatedly banning those who are rude and toxic on it for months at a time now would they?

[William Shakesman]

There are a lot of folks who would be really surprised how unpopular they actually are should an upvote and downvote system be implemented. And once you find that out, you cannot put it back in the box.

[Unicorn Slayer]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

There are a lot of folks who would be really surprised how unpopular they actually are should an upvote and downvote system be implemented. And once you find that out, you cannot put it back in the box.

Forums aren't a popularity content, Often facts are indeed unpopular and people would rather believe a comfortable lie such as that mass reporting is why they get banned instead of accepting the less popular truth in they got banned becaus ethey broke the rules.

if people need to feel popular then that is a personal failing in their self esteem and something they should talk about with a licensed therapist.

The simple facts are an upvote/downvote system as shown by history is abused by trolls who downvote anyone they don't like, even when that person is giving out the correct info. Its not a hypothetical, its literally what happened in the old forums.

[Walmart Balrog]

if you can't handle the internet i'd recommend you stay off the forums. They can deteriorate already poor mental health

[The End]

Originally posted by William Shakesman:

There are a lot of folks who would be really surprised how unpopular they actually are should an upvote and downvote system be implemented. And once you find that out, you cannot put it back in the box.

Downvotes would be used for harassment and trolling, as a number they would be worth nothing.