Cool thread. My advice: Hire several hundred friends to proclaim your excellence in forums for a month. Humans tend to go with the flow. Worked for me.
Okay, I'll be that guy. Op, your message is a good learning tool for respect, but I would rather have no respect from the mass players and be myself then to be respected. I will troll and banter, in fact it is fun to me to do so. I also find the being politically correct will build up false respect. Yeah they respect you because you are nice and when pushed you won't always back down but that culture is boring. That same culture is also a breeding ground for lies and deceit. Even though I will clash with many people who share my style of thinking, I find that blunt and educated controversies are more respectable than those who play it nice. There is also a border to this. If you are purposely trolling or bickering just to be an ass, it is ill received depending on the level of intelligence. Now if those who troll do it in a comedic or entertaining means, they will get a following. Take Alison, Balto, and GoldenTroll for instance. So in my counter argument, I will agree that you op is correct but only correct for a percentage of the players, ever how large that percentage may be. Still, I would find that being you and by being you, presenting yourself in not just a blunt way, but also comedic and/or intelligent way will gain you more respect. That stands true to those who enjoy and avoid conflict.
I could not agree more, 3. This guide is mainly for the people that literally don't know how to play nice and earn respect the obvious way. There are many other ways to earn respect including and not limited to being yourself. This guide also helps people that are new to KAW avoid becoming perm farms of clans and then ending up reseting and/or rage quitting. In a war game like this, you can easily earn respect from people that you were arguing with, making fun of, farming, etc. These guidelines I have set are an overall generalization of forums throughout the 'net.
I will. I had no idea how to use BB coding. A couple forum vets pm'd me to teach me. I might add some to this and also add some quotes to this from people who suggested ideas.
This person just called Alison a troll? If trolling means making yourself look stupid then I have been doing it wrong all these years!
I would completely agree with the OP, except that these ideals do not appear to apply in certain threads. In political, religious, and even science based threads, the posts that garner the most support are the rudest, most invective, poorly spelled or thought out, and least objectively rational ones, replete with name calling. I applaud the ideals of the OP, and hope players will consider living up to these on all threads.
We can only hope @KingCalm, but I can imagine a future with less hateful arguments and more helpful discussions.