Hi All,

Over the past 12 days, I've spent time away from technology and life at home, partially to reflect on my life, the choices I and others make as people, how these actions are perceived by others, and how these actions affect the world. I came back to this forum hoping that I would find a community that was beginning to right itself and get back on track. Instead, I found more bickering, arguing and nitpicking from almost everyone including myself, and I am thoroughly disheartened at what I see.

A few years ago when I joined, I felt The AudioGames.net Forum provided an avenue to discuss the creation and development of audio games and to provide us as a community with the means to interact, share knowledge and find support from blind, visually impaired and sited peers alike. Today, I see a forum that has devolved into a snarling, fighting mess that is straying away from that purpose. Our collective mistrust and bad faith have become unhealthy and unsustainable for the larger community, both in how we interact with each other and how we are perceived by outsiders looking in.

Furthermore, I feel that everyone here is seeing the problem, but we're not really trying to break the loop: someone attacks someone else for any reason, the person attacked tries their best to defend their actions and opinions, often attacking others in the process intentionally or unintentionally, the community takes sides, and everything repeats. I, along with most all of us, have been part of this loop at one time or another. Rather than investing our energy into thinking of how we can make small, positive change in an effort to better our group, we're inadvertently choosing to continue the constant bickering and infighting which serves no purpose other than to rile everything up and cause hate and discontent, and I've had enough of it.

So, I pose a question to all of you. How can we, as a community, work to clean up the mess and return to what I hope is our original purpose, if I understand it correctly? I for one feel that we all must be more mindful of the weight our words and actions carry, both in an immediate sense and a more long-term sense. We should be mindful that we are different in our values, our thought processes, and how they shape our actions. We should be more respectful of this fact. basically, we all need to think before we type. I feel this would greatly improve the forum, but these are only my thoughts on the subject, and we need to work on this together as a community.

To conclude, I don't think this forum is a bad place, nor do I feel that its inhabitants are inherently predisposed to fighting and taring each other down at every chance. However, I also feel that the atmosphere here has taken a sharp downhill turn, and we seriously need to evaluate our actions and how we treat each other in order to keep this forum a healthy, supportive environment.

I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on how we can improve as a forum and as a community.

Edit: Fixed spelling and grammar mistakes in the topic title.