How do I stop a "more senior" user, that seems to dislike my logic, from harassing every answer I give on StackExchange-RPG

Question

For the resolution see bottom of post

How do I stop a "more senior" user, that seems to dislike my logic, from harassing every answer I give on StackExchange-RPG?

I'm starting to feel very pushed away by certain user(s), who seem to enjoy claiming 'I can't follow your logic"

Insinuating I'm "stupid" & trying to push me away from explaining my logic with thinly veiled "pokes"

Is there an effective way to have it dealt with other than burning this account and making a new "fake-user" to escape them?

Most of the issues are interpretations of RAW in DnD(5e)

Added after I realized I had misunderstood

I think I mistook polite debate due to my personally passive nature. I would like to openly apologize for my over-reaction and opening this question.

To anyone experiencing a similar issue, directly mention how a comment made you feel IS the correct 1st step, which I failed to take....dont be a me, allow the other party the option to explain

Answer 1

I think it's me and I'm sorry

There is a fine line between helping and not being helpful and I clearly have crossed that with you. My intent was to help provide assistance in improving your answer before downvoting because you are new. But somewhere I crossed a line for you.

There is no bad blood, at least on my side and I can avoid commenting on your answers in the future.

Answer 2

RPG.SE has particular idosyncrasies which users are expected to adhere to in order to receive a positive response to their answers.

Over time, every online community tends to develop a set of social expectations. Veterans adhere to them easily and even enforce them, but new users don't know the unwritten rules, and often clash with the veterans until they manage to internalize the rules. This can lead to communities becoming insular and occasionally harsh to new users.

In your case, I don't believe they're picking on you specifically, but rather that the manner in which you answer questions has not acquired the same tone and style that the answers of veterans have. The set of critical users tends to be small, because RPG.SE has relatively few users compared to other Stack Exchange sites, even with the D&D 5e boom.

Stack Exchange sites do warn users to be especially tolerant when replying to a new user, but the new user status wears off relatively quickly.

In particular, looking at your five recently downvoted answers, I suspect you are making the following faux pas:

• Too much bold/italic text. Bold is useful, and I use it myself, but you appear to use it more than is the norm on this particular site.
• Questions about rules tend to require rules-based citations, either quotes or page references, which back up the answer. Opinions are not highly valued.
• Answering questions that already accepted a correct answer some time ago. This is usually considered unnecessary. Late answers also tend to get few upvotes in general.
• Posting comments as answers. On RPG.SE, the answer box is for answering the question, not replying to existing answers. This differs from a forum, where discussion is expected.

Answer 3

There are a bunch of things you can do, and you seem to be working your way up the chain.

(N.B. I haven't gone and dug through your comments/answers to try and ferret out who it is or what the interactions have looked like, as you explicitly are asking to keep it a little bit general. So here's a generalized answer.)

There are lots of things to do, so I'm presenting them in order of response-time as I estimate them.

Public/visible approaches:

1. Comment back with an open mind.

It's a rare person on this site who isn't thoughtful, well-meaning, and trying to help as best they understand how to. And even in those cases we bump up against each other. If a more-senior user's interactions with you feel unfriendly or harrassing, let them know. (And Be Nice while doing so.) Comments like "hey, I know you're probably just trying to help, but I'm feeling chased around and berated. Can you slow down?" will go a long way with nearly 100% of our users.

2. Pop in to Roleplaying Games General Chat.

There are experienced site users there basically 24/7. It's always reasonable to pop in there and say "hey, I'm getting some comments that bug me, can someone sanity-check me?" Again: it's a place full of helpful people, and these ones practice helping RPGSE users more than most.

It is chat, so there's an immediacy and conversational aspect to it that may be useful. However, there is a transience that may not be what you're looking for. And, of course, you're just getting one or two users' opinions. (Though keep an eye out for usernames in italics--room owners--or in blue--moderators. They've been singled out as particularly experienced and/or responsible.)

3. Open a meta post.

Like you've done here. Meta has the benefit of more eyeballs. It's a slower medium, so you get more fleshed-out responses. However, you may get commensurately more requesting of information about your situation. (As you did here.) Again: it's people trying to be the most helpful, all speaking from our own experiences.

Private approaches:

4. Flag a comment or post.

Flagging anything on site^* enters it into a queue that the elected moderators check in on regularly. (Flag handling times around here average around an hour or two.) It's helpful if more than one comment/post is implicated--if there's a pattern--for you to choose "custom reason" and use the text field to tell us what you can. Help us do some spelunking, and we'll be right there with you.

5. Ping (@USERNAME) an elected moderator in chat and ask for a private conversation.

The list of the site's elected moderators can always be found here. If you ping one of us in chat and request it, we have the ability to create a new chatroom that's private and add you to the room's access list. You can ping someone by writing @username in chat using their username, so to ping me you'd write @nitsua60. (Note that "private" means only visible to moderators and those on the access list and to SE staff. And "moderators" there means any moderator across the network. So it's not super private, but it's pretty out-of-the-way.)

6. Contact SE Staff.

Every page on the network has a Contact link in its footer, and there are Community Managers (employees ate SE) who see that stream of messages.

^{* - Well, almost anything. There are some places where a number of flags can produce system-automated actions, like deleting a comment. The intricacies of this are partially documented on meta.SE and partially kept secret for efficacy. Interested readers should go on a quest to meta.SE for this knowledge. If the crone advises you to bypass the bastion of the gargoyle queen, ignore that advice. The Merchant of Bula is a stalwart ally, though quick to anger. A rival user my seek the same information. Beware wolves in sheep's clothing, that's disgusting.}

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TL;DR: I'm sorry it's been a rough day. From what I see here you're handling things how we'd expect, and in the time I've been writing this post I see that the (presumptive) user you're talking about has apologized for not coming across how they'd intended. I hope the answers here--varied in scope and approach!--help.

Answer 4

You grow a thicker skin and you grind through it

That's what I did. Well, I already have a thick skin and I am a stubborn SoB.

When I first got to RPGSE (2015) I had no experience with Stack Exchange and Stack Overload stuff; I found that the responses to normal communication were rather bizarre.
I had not quite grokked how SE is its own little animal, how it has a particular character due to it using a model of communication that was built for and by code writing people to help code writing people.

That is what's going on here; learning new jargon, new norms, and a new style of communication. (Similarly, when you first get into the military, you learn a whole new way to communicate).

With a little patience, and some teeth grinding, and a few people speaking to me as a normal human being would, I got over the hump. And I have had a good experience overall.

You are not being stalked. People are trying to help you improve questions and answers, though sometimes that isn't obvious. I find that I have this problem now and again, and I think that's due to having been in the system for a while: now and again, a new user takes what I think is constructive critique as a personal attack.

So we have to work together to get over it.

Hang in there.

RPGSE is a good site with good people, but its norms take some getting used to.

And Welcome! Glad to have you on board! 8^D

Answer 5

I think there are a couple things going on here

Tone can be hard to read (and easy to misread)

I think the first is simply the fact that tone can be very difficult to convey through internet text messages. If a reader sees your answer and is confused by something, s/he might leave a comment to that effect and think it sounds like an "oh, by the way, I'm having trouble parsing exactly what you're saying here, can you help set me straight?" But then another person reads the comment and it sounds like "Hey, your question makes no sense. It's terrible."

It's the same wording but, for whatever reason, its tone reads differently to different people. It's unfortunate, but it does happen. So I think it's healthy to try and approach what's written on this site keeping the next point in mind:

This is a community of passionate people.

We're passionate about the topic (in this case tabletop RPGs) and we're passionate about learning and teaching. Passion is definitely one of those things that can be misconstrued as "aggressive."

Everyone on this site is here because we want to help other people. To do that, we have a very specific format that is unlike a conventional web forum...

Don't forget the Stack Exchange's format

We have a clear format that we like questions and answers to adhere to. The goal of this site is to provide answers and clarity not just for the first person to ask a question but for anyone else who comes along with that same (or similar enough) question to help them out.

The way we do this is to shape questions and answers such that the context for the question is clear (you've run into some of that with the comments on this question, for example) and the evidence to support the answers is grounded in facts and evidence.

(Some questions blur the lines on this a little, but the goal is always to provide concrete answers and solutions even to things like nebulous social/etiquette questions.)

One thing that helped me in my journey on this site was to shift my thinking: I'm asking a question of providing an answer, but it's not really "my" question or answer. Someone can come along and edit it at any point.

So if somebody is leaving comments that they think your answer isn't quite holding to this paradigm, then understand it's not personal and they're only trying to ensure that the content of this site is the best that it can be for everybody.

And yes, that can sometimes come across as a bit elitist, especially if the person leaving the comment is simply making a quick remark.

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From what I can see, looking through your various answers, is that it's not the same person leaving the comments that I think you're reacting to but different people. So, my advice is to try and view the comments that you're seeing as attacks in a new light: an opportunity to engage with the community and to help craft questions/answers that will be factual and informative for others to use as a resource.

Try to view comments that point out things they're seeing issues with not as attacks but as a team member (an editor) trying to help you produce a better answer.

And, as I've learned many times, it's possible to just be flat out wrong (or even possibly wrong, given a different yet valid interpretation of things). It's okay. We've all been there, we'll all (I'm sure) be there again :-P

As Korvin points out, having a little thick skin can sometimes be beneficial (but then, this is the internet, so that's just good life advice).

Also, as Medix points out in a comment, if you have a lot of answers on recent questions, your activity "rises" to the top of the active questions and so you're just statistically more likely to draw more comments. It's not people dog piling on you, you're just "trending," as it were.

I hope your recent frustrations haven't put you off too much and it is really good that you took the effort to open dialogue about the issues. It's always great to see new and passionate people enter the community!