It's always horses for courses - my first message board was a quasi-NHS one for people with mental issues and it was a curious mix of gung-ho open and extremely personal anecdotes, frosty to non-existent welcoming and a feeling of talking into empty space in terms of feedback at time. Consequently I didn't stay long as I felt I wasn't spectacularly in need of 'belonging' on there which some people certainly did feel but didn't let others in too easily. Par for the course there as obviously, and I realise this is a sweeping generalisation but it's made with some justification and experience, a forum of people with mental issues isn't going to be easy to dive into and make friends with necessarily unless you persevere and have a good reason to want to be accepted with the long term 'cliques'
This board can seem cliqueish as evidenced when we get flashpoints occasionally and people (and yes I do mean me and other usual suspects who for the sake of clarity I'll call pooh
) start getting defensive and then combative or just bloody-minded with 'troublemakers' who are in general just newcomers who haven't found their bearings yet. The good thing about us lot is that we'll talk it through and mostly laugh about it whilst we're sorting it out (with Tony refereeing when needed) in a way that I think is to do with being a Terry fan in that we're opinionated but open to other views and paths, so any animosity (mostly) tails off pretty quickly unless someone's absolutely determined to be a b*tch Troll with PMT (actual gender
unspecific here - blokes can be just as bad :twisted: ).
I'm actually back on my 'badass' LotR forum again after swearing I was done with the jerks forever, because the jerks I was really having trouble with (because to call them Nazis would be an insult to the Luftwaffe if not the Gestapo...
) had all gone off in huff to be elitist on another board and the ones who are left there now are there for the geekiness and to roleplay in Middle Earth - and I get to play Sauron and Morgoth with prejudice!
What I don't do on there is go anywhere except the RP thread I'm playing in, as I know I'll get irritated by the lore geeks and petty 'kingdom' arselickers who don't know their Tolkien from Noddy because they can barely read or LotRO clones with no depth of field who just want to point score...
I can do Middle Earth RP on DreamWorlds too, but there's lots more people to play with on the old board and so that's where I go for my main RP kicks now, to DreamWorlds for comfort whinging and other fandom immersion and 'creative' projects and on here for general socialising, bitching, tub-thumping and TP basking.
Boards are what the people who use them make them - like Tony says the CA board is just coming at things from another direction and emphasis and so appeals to people differently than here whilst ostensibly sharing some common traits
It's all good and all you have to do is find your comfort zones and where they fit best
