"On the Silph Road's Culture: A Word from the Silph Road Team"

#PokemonGO: Evening travelers,I sit here with a weight on my heart. Over the past few days, something disturbing has become clearer and clearer to the Silph Road team. Things have come to a point where I feel the need to share a message.Why There's A Silph RoadOn a cold winter night two years ago, /u/Moots7 and I met about an idea. We'd been monitoring the upcoming game "Pokemon GO" which sounded like a childhood dream in the making. But the communities that had formed around the game were already suffering from several common pitfalls common to many game communities. Negativity and cynicism had already taken deep root - even months before launch. With every new mechanic, leak, screenshot, or interview, folks raced to find a snarky way to condescend and condemn.Analysis suffered. Conversation suffered. Camaraderie and community degraded.We decided to create a separate little (heh) board of our own. We'd call it The Silph Road. We'd moderate proactively and make a community that fostered positive, constructive, drama-free content and became a true community.To help folks understand our unusually-limited content focus, we'd even put in the sub's rules that this is not a "free speech" sub and that threads that got too hot would be redirected to other communities.And guess what. ...it worked.Before long, we had 10,000 like-minded, drama-free folks craving a little deeper discussion traveling the Road with us. And we were enjoying it immensely.Then Pokemon GO launched. We swelled to 15,000 travelers before long. Soon afterward, we learned that trading wasn't coming for a while, and our trading network might never even be actualized! But we didn't care. We had something even better - a community of intelligent, awesome people. And for a game like PoGO, where you can't play indoors at the end of the day, that was a wonderful thing to have.We grew, and we grew, and we grew some more.Before long, we had over 100,000 travelers. We poured time and energy into growing our leadership team and our Research Group, into scaling our free online resources, and into maintaining the integrity of our community boards.Snark, Cynicism, and CondescensionNiantic launched popular mechanics, and unpopular mechanics. The game is a total roller coaster, as all Niantic games are, and has great highs, and deep lows. But the Road remained constant. Even-keel, and focused on learning and helping others get high-quality information and a community free from salt mines and focused on the good.Thousands of faces joined us every week (if you yourself are new to the Road, welcome!) - and we remained a place for higher-caliber discussion and drama-free optimism. A place to come for folks who wanted to learn, to share their studies, or to enjoy the game and see the latest.But in these past few weeks, something has changed.A large influx of accounts new to the Road has come here and unfortunately have ignored our posting guidelines and community values. Negativity, cynicism, and snark have taken root. These do not coexist with the principles of the Road. Once snarkiness becomes the dominant tone of a thread, bandwagoning occurs and entire threads become echo chambers of unconstructive cynicism and venting.This is not what the Road is for.We did not create these boards and donate thousands of hours of our lives to foster a culture and community for visitors to come sling dung. The Road is more than that - and its guidelines have been very intentionally crafted and maintained over the years.So, I have a request.A Call to HelpThe vast majority of our community here on the Road are silent lurkers and are here because of the Road's different culture. Many of our longest-standing travelers have been with us over a year - some even since the beginning!I'm calling on you all: don't let us lose our culture. Help us keep the Road the Road.How? We need you to help the volunteer mod team. Report useless cyncism or snarky zingers that degrade and corrupt threads until they're unrecognizable from virtually every other GO community out there. Snark begets snark. And cynicism begets cynicism, frustration, and vitriol. Upvote constructive, well-reasoned content. And chime in with well-thought-out contributions.Honest emotional reactions have a place - but the Road is simply not the place for emotional content and snark.Many visitors unfamiliar with the Road's longstanding focus often feel that restricting emotional or snarky content means 'valid' criticism is being snuffed out. All criticism is fine for the Road, as long as it fits our guidelines. Don't use this board to hate on things - use it to say what would make it better or illustrate weaknesses and strengths of mechanics.The FutureThis is not the first time the Road has seen a dip in constructive thought and a rise of dramatic content. Just like the last several times, I'll repeat: the Silph Road team is not going anywhere. Come hell or high water, we believe communities are better with a clear focus and with proactive moderation. This community is not an everyman's community - nor will it try to be. It's our community - and it has its own culture and values. We ask visitors to please respect this - or we will have to show you the door.So help us, travelers. If the Road has meant anything to you over the past two years, help us keep its culture strong. Pokemon GO has a lot more ahead - and we look forward to traveling the Road with you and having an awesome time wherever it leads us.- Executive Dronpes -tl;dr - This is the Silph Road. Long posts are welcome here. Go read the post, traveler. :) via /r/TheSilphRoad http://ift.tt/2i2dTha