which community are you talking about? I mean here in the audio games? anywhere else?

@afrim;

Brad mentioned this forum and The Zone, another online community of visually impaired people, and there are other similar communities.

@Dark;

If I recall correcly, in the disappointed with the blind community topic, you yourself said that you were distancing yourself from the blind and visually impaired communities and preferred to be with your sighted friends for the very same or similar reasons that Ghost Writer mentioned.

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I too have to agree with Ghost Writer and Brad. I lost my vision to an aggressive form of glaucoma two years ago. For most of the past two years, I was in a deep depression over my vision loss. I wasn't interested in doing anything or socializing. I just stayed shut in in my apartment and listened to audio books all day. But now in the past month, I've started coming out of the depression, I'm reaching out to people I've lost contact with over the past two years, reconnecting with family. and I'm getting interested in doing something useful with myself again, before I lost my vision, I was a software developer, so now I'm getting back into that, I've decided that I want to learn to develop audio games. I have a couple of ideas, and I also have ideas for a couple of programs that visually impaired people might find useful. In other words, things are looking up!

When I found this community, I thought I'd found a great place to hang out and socialize with people who might have similar points of view and outlooks because they were also visually impaired as I am. But over time, the way some people here behave, I find myself leaning away from this community and towards those communities I'd been a member of since before I lost my vision. As Ghost Writer said, I found they are generally happier, friendlier, and are very accepting that despite my blindness, I can be a useful member of the community. I find I enjoy their community more than I like this one.

An example: I;m taking a look at the NVDA screen reader as a possible alternative to JAWS. Since I would be actively comparing the two screen readers, I thought my comments would be welcome in the modern day comparison of NVDA and JAWS topic, what I got instead was to be ridiculed for my choice of file manager instead of Windows explorer and a remark that because the writer changes his own settings when he needs to he can't help me with mine, how does changing his own settings when he needs to prevent him from helping anyone else with theirs, unless he's just saying, I could help you, but I don't want to, what the heck? And besides, I never asked for any help from anyone, I was just relating some of the issues I was encountering. As a community, we should be helping each other or at the very least, respecting each other and our choices, not the ridicule and disdain I've seen people show to other people's choices just because they don't agree with theirs. Too often I've seen people ridiculed because they choose to use and like JAWS instead of NVDA, , or, in my case because I choose to use a file manager other than Windows explorer. Not only is that not right, it's unacceptable and shows a lack of tolerance and maturity.

When the topic of Freedom Scientific's ridiculous license agreement turned up, people here start calling Freedom Scientific childish name, and wish misfortune on its employees by wanting the company to go out of business so they lose their jobs. When I complained about what I thought was childish behavior, they told me to shut up and ignore them if I didn't like it. What's ironic is that while they were trying to suppress my right to speak my opinion they were speaking their own. Sorry, but it doesn't work that way unless you are a despotic ruler.

@ghost rider

You are generalizing 'the blind community' by extrapolating from particular incidents.

This may be justified, but please be more specific and provide examples.

It's very easy to claim that 'the blind community' is childish without providing any exact sources.

Ghost Rider, while I do get what you are saying I also think you are letting a few bad apples spoil your opinion of what is a fairly decent community in the main. The reason I say that is I have been on the web for close to twenty years, and the fact is I have been on both blind and sighted forums, chat rooms, and while there certainly are individuals in the blind community that act childish, immature, and behave inappropriately I have been around the web enough these last two decades to know there are some mainstream communities that are just as bad as not worse. It just all depends on what subject you are on, and how volatile it gets. I have seen some pretty spectacular flame wars on mainstream forums that make the childish stuff that goes on here seem pretty minor in comparison. So let's not point fingers and judge the entire blind community based on a handful of immature and childish individuals.

@Some of you

Well, I agree that there are many problems going on in the blind community, especially in some forums, but that doesn't necessarily mean that all are the same. With this state, you are reminding me a generalised opinion of the mainstream sited people who think that all blind people are equally the same. They cannot study, they cannot learn, they are unable to help themselves in their daily life, etc etc etc. I registered in this forum about 9 or 10 months ago, and I've seen a very good community, far far better than the other ones. It's true that some people in the blind community act extremely childish. I've seen pretty much more childish behavior in the other forums, like Playroom, when a person would report another in the public forum, and the posts would flow 90 comments per day. That went so bad that the admin stated that he got mad by that post and decided to close the topic because everything felt like a game or fairytale for a three year old child.

These kinds of things are supposed to happen even in the sited forums, aren't they?
Fortunately blindness is a disability which is supposed to cause problems to the vision not to the brain. So there are very bad people, immature, mentally disorganized, but there are also very good and intelligent blind people as well who will pleasurely get along with you and you will enjoy every single discussion.

Thank you for taking the time to read this post and please do not get all blinds stuck in the same category.
Have a good time.

hi.

I agree. It's strange but there's not much we can do about the protecting thing. It's not good in my opinion. Sure protect to a sertain extent but there needs to be a stopping line and that line should not be crossed.

I have seen a lot of drama on the playroom and don't go on there that much because of it.

Hello all,
Here is my point of view.

  I love audio games. That is, I love to develop, play, and talk about them, which is the reason I have not left the forum. I've seen the drama, ---- I used to be part of it myself, but that stopped a couple of months ago. But back to the subject at hand, I will not leave this forum simply for the fact that there are! supportive people, civilized people, people who can help with any technical issues I have, people who make wonderful games and play and support any that I make myself, people that have some sense in their brains, --- and those are the people, in my opinion, that keep this community running. The moderators, while they do a great job in most cases of stomping out the drama that comes about, are not what drives this forum; it's the people. and I don't mean the immature drama magnets, I mean the tens, (maybe even hundreds because I don't bother to count), of people who are there to help, discuss, and play games with. I have decided to be one of those people. So when there are topics with drama in them now a days, I mostly either have a brief look and laugh before hitting the close button, or skip them entirely. Because I could leave this community all I want, just to join a sighted community. But then what? I'd find 20 or so drama topics within 6 months as I have here and leave that one too. So what would be the point?

Hi all,
Well, I can see both sides of this.
The thing is, Ghost Rider has a point. Not because blindness-specific forums have less drama, but because when drama happens here, it seems to pile on all at once. We're not talking about a Tumblr post where literally 20,000 people could comment. Here, the same people tend to get into the same old petty fights.
Furthermore, I can think of a couple of newer audio games that are so poorly run that it makes me sick to think about. I'm not going to mention names, but, because I am closer to one of these situations than I would like to be, I hear about things all the time that truly make my blood boil. Security risks, hacking, general immaturity, and so forth, are things that I hear about on a daily basis, because I happen to be close to someone who plays a big part in running one of these games. And I find myself getting more and more frustrated, because everybody is just going on their merry way, not caring at all about what's really going on, because these people are young and lack life experience.
So to be honest, I can see why Ghost Rider is frustrated. But Dark is also correct that the internet is really a black hole of drama if that's what you seek.

It depends upon the online game, it's security and how it's run.

There are many extremely good browser games and muds that entirely missout on the hacking and associated drama. Likewise, while there were trouble makers on Swamp  through a lot of work on Aprone's part I believe that situation has become managable, and really the world's first audio multiplayer fps is definitely something.

The issue with online games seems to be entirely that of younger, newer developers who begin a project without certain levels of experience or stability. IN some cases this leads to games that by rights should have been practice example games or should have considderably more work and thought put into them going live and all the accompanying drama. In other cases it leads to games being launched without adequate security or experienced moderation, or still worse, newer developers getting into arguements with their own friends or colleagues, arguements that often result in a lot of petty and malicious behaviour, often doubly worse because such people have privilidged access to the code.

Unfortunately it is a trend, that everyone suddenly wants to create an online game, but perhaps should think more carefully before doing so, and yes, it's resulted in a lot of agro although the agro is more based on that situation and it's not too different to other major arguements that have arisen in the past resulting from a certain trend in thinking which perhaps isn't thought through sufficiently.

It'll die out in the end though, these things always do, ----  anyone who was here a few  years ago remember the row over accents? or the "everyone complain about the database" episode?

as with most things, this too shal pass, however if everyone jumps ship at the first sign of bad weather, ---- well it'll be a pretty empty ship, and bad weather does tend to be fairly universal in any community, at some point in time.

My response to being ridiculed when I don't know something is to ask my heckler something I know he doesn't that I do, that usually puts them in their place. Your question doesn't have to be about the same or similar thing you didn't have an answer to, the point is to subtly tell the detractor that they don't know everything either, but its more effective if it is.

@Ghost rider, I can't speak for Klango or the playroom or Zone bbs or other places sinse I have my hands full with this forum and games and the audeasy list and don't particularly feel the need for more, .
Here at least however  remember we do have rules about insults, and I do always try myself to assist when someone asks a question if I can.

I can tell you that there have actually always been younger developers who work on practice games and often cause a lot of shenanigans, naming no names, but I certainly have seen this before. The online games craze  has resulted in matters being magnified as I said, but fundamentally the situation isn't new. Generally speaking one of two things will happen, either the younger devs will grow up and work harder, or (and I am sad to say this happens more frequently with those who engage in lots of drama), will simply drop off the map taking their usually  unpolished games with them.

Also don't forget not all new developers are teenagers either.