[Chariot]

Originally Posted by ddrxero64

It's ok to have an opinion, but it's not okay to put someone down because of it.

Oh I agree, though I'm not sure it was what I was advocating in my post (and you may not be saying I was either). Of course it's not right to put down a person, as in "you'd have to be stupid to make a stepfile like this". It's also best if you don't call the stepfile itself stupid either. However, I find myself doing it. I'll admit it. I played something today (whose name I can't remember, and maybe that's for the better) that I raged about for a good 30 seconds in profile chat. I totally had my reasons for disliking it, but I wasn't very tactful about it. At the same time, I believe that people's opinions should be heard because people feel a need to voice their opinions. I know that if I shared a file of mine in this thread and 100 people played it, not all 100 would like it. If 70 of them disliked it and said "It SUCKED because blah blah blah," I wouldn't be particularly hurt because I know it's only other people's opinions and I know that the most valuable opinion about my work is mine. At the same time people could learn to be more gentle, people could also learn to be tougher.

Obviously, tact can improve the quality of any community; I'm not too familiar with Stepmania's crowd, but I've found that people in general can be very brutally honest, to the point where it becomes less constructive and more destructive, and that people in general could benefit from some tact. However, like you said, it's all optimism and wishful thinking.