Well first of all let me get this straight : This thread stems up from a scission in the council (saying that won't surprise anyone I guess). One group is made of sheeo-nine, while the other group is made up of biass-ftx. The discussion between those 2 party have been so bad, that they can't get in agreement about completely irrelevant topic, like the use of a word in an official thread (thousands of word of debate over such petty thing).
I won't be talking about the different subject that are opposing that 2 groups, like conflict of interest (sanctuary), news management, accusation of being afk, etc... and I will only focus on the topic of this thread that is toxicity, and especially in the council.
If you are lazy to read the following, it can be sum up at : it's not black and white, and you can't accuse specific persons (imo).
Before hand I will only talk about toxicity and contribution, not toxicity in the game. Other people have well separated those 2 different issues, and we can't say that toxicity in council lead to lower retention (or at least by a direct link).
first of all, you can find dirt on everyone. I'll expose private conversation here, not to condemn the person, but to showcase the issue.
Tbh this example was especially problematic to me, not because it can be said toxic, but because it meant, at that time that we couldn't collaborate to improve faf.
Note that I brought that up for the election of nine in the council (to warn other councillors when taking our decision), while i was validating that candidature (and at the same time setting my feeling aside).
What i want to say, is that you can find dirt on everyone. You can find dirt on me too, we all have our bad mood, we interpret badly what other people meant, etc...
Here another example showcasing that issue even from a councillor at the time. It's not straight forward toxicity like insults, but the result was a moderator stopping contributing because of it.
So that was when we discovered that we were able to manipulate the lobby for malicious intent. I've the full log (and can provide it), but i'm only posting relevant parts of it to showcase the issue.
The issue is a big ego and poor communication skill, leading to someone talking other people down.
The message i want to convey here is that people define toxicity as insult in general, but it can be way broader than that. Especially people doing passive aggressive. It's very hard to work with such people (more on that later).
Now note that I've been working with Icedreamer for a long period of time, despite knowing his behaviour. I didn't stop contributing because some people have been toxic. In the case of Icedreamer, he was also very competent for its job, thus why we can't just remove someone because he is "toxic".
I think people that contribute to a community like this one, need to grow a thick skin. Some people will quit the boat for little, and you can't save everyone. For example, thinking of the balance team, we can tell one another that our ideas are dumb, or that we are stupid etc.. But that doesn't stop us from moving forward altogether to improve the balance and keep confronting our ideas. Some people weren't able to handle that, even if in the end the light mood in the team prevent it from being a toxic place (imo).
I also wanted to point out that some people in that thread played as if they were only victim of toxicity. But as I said already it's not black and white. And I find it way easier to contribute to this project with a ftx or a biass having a direct communication and possibly calling names on me, than with a Exotic-Retard always doing passive-aggressive with me.
So yeah TLDR :
It's all black and white, we can find dirt on everyone, and miscommunication in the council is due to the conflict of 2 groups.
Also you should grow a thick skin if you want to contribute in a community in general.
