that's a parody on Billy Joel's "We didn't start the Fire".

OK ... fine ... He could start by curbing the nasty enthusiasm of some of his fanatical worshippers, who pounce on almost any critical post against DG with sarcastic derision, and who sometimes act like self-appointed, pa-trolling bouncers.

(I appreciate your wording, in the quote : so revealing ...)

just look at the WoW forums and decide what community u want

1. flamers all the way

2. nice community where u can get help and get nice answers.

This.  This is what I want out of the community here.  Cause I'm gonna get steamrolled once I move into Multiplayer, and I'd much rather have a community of players that will help me improve rather than laugh in my face at my obvious lack of skills with this game.

Looking to emulate boards like the GalCiv boards and Sins boards is a good thing.

Or, for all of you Dota players here, the community online in War3 recently are just full of idiots and losers who think Dota is their life. Its really tiring to go into a game just to have fun and have someone ban you cus you died .

So far I like the community here. A few guys could tone themselves down a nauch but I haven't run into anyone on here deserving of a ban hammer heh.

I will admit I have gotten a bit heated in some games...but not really inflammatory as far as most internetz flaming goes.

the worst players are the ones who won't talk to you at all though I think.

While the community gets no points by me. Yes the Battle.net system is one of the best I have ever played on.

I'd like to maintain a civil, positive, and mature tone. However, as much as I like online gaming it seems to be dominated by a lot of internet bullies. This is especially rampant in Blizzard games and to be honest I think the Blizzard staff promote the attitude by using similar snarky remarks and "piling on" those that kind of don't hew to the party line.

Honestly, I think the tone of this community will be the responsibility of the moderators of this board. If you allow bullying and insults to go un-punished, you will get a mean spirited community.

Personally, I think you should go for a zero tolerance policy but it's your call.

Just don't be surprised at how mean and devious anonymous gamers will become when left to their own devices.

Oh and I'm going to add this as a concrete suggestion:

Volunteer community moderators (if you can't afford paid staff to police the boards).

"What? How can that work? That's a dumb idea!!!" Some might say.

However, I am active on a large political forum board that used to get extremely nasty around primaries and elections. The forum owners have no way to pay for staff so their solution was to tap fair-minded and judicious forum community members to volunteer for set periods of time (usually 3 months).

These mods would respond to alerts when people were acting like jerks. It actually worked very well and cleaned the place up although there's always the temptation for people to "go negative".

It boiled down to this: If you wanted to be insulting and disruptive, you were banned from posting for a few days. If you made it a habit, you were gone.

Of course you have to link forum identities to an email address or game key # or something like that so people just don't make new accounts.

Bottom line: People won't police themselves because of the anonymity factor. If you can't see someone's eyes and how they feel, it's just too easy to let your worst side show. Then, once the pattern is set even very nice people will cop attitudes just so they don't get beat down. The ground rules have to be set and enforced by Stardock.

it seems an inevitable consequence of free speech. Where the line is actually blurred.

I just hope it becomes friendly.

Although i have found if i dont post what people consider stuipid or short sighted (knowing what that is and isnt, is hard lol). I have found i am helped with likeminded people.

EDIT: What it matter what i think, or anyone else thinks, its on the net... I just want to have fun playing the game and increasing strat and technique.

The Demigod forums really aren't that bad. If you think they are then just take a look at IGN or Gamespot. You'd be amazed at the amount of flaming and fanboyism.

I wasn't actually talking to you, just saying something in general. I agree with your point, in any case.

I'm a member of several online communities, and Demigod's is in the better half.
I used to be a very active member in the Diablo II community for quite a long time, and you'd be surprised how mature a lot of the people were on several boards. However, little by little, the community went from being people who loved the game and wanted to talk about it, to people who loved Blizzard games and wanted to talk about them and other things, to eventually people who dedicated their lives in service to fanboyism of Blizzard in general and who had absolutely no respect for anyone who didn't share their opinion.
I can already seen people taking this kind of approach with Stardock, however as long as Brad keeps his journals going where he clearly admits to mistakes on their behalf and welcomes discussion on them, I don't think we're in any real risk of becoming the World of Warcraft forums - by far the worst forums I have ever posted on.

I love the idea of volunteer moderators, however the offical guys should certainly keep an eye on their doings to make sure the position is never abused as I have seen this idea back fire on more than one occasion.

WoW forums are /b/ 2.0.

You kinda have to appreciate the lack of respect for anything to understand the humor.  If you don't admit that some of the posts were funny, i'd have to say you aren't American.  Because without a sense of funny, what are we?  We're red, and i'd rather be dead than red.