Toxicity on the internet is pretty much everywhere. It's a legit epidemic and is largely proportional to the size of the community and the amount of anonymity the site provides. 4chan is gigantic and completely anonymous, and that directly results in it being the single biggest cesspool on the internet, IMO. And after a time, the undesirables that can't play nice with others on the smaller sites end up there, boosting that effect even more. People will go where other people like themselves are. The opposite is true of more selective sites like neogaf, where the reverse happens (sadly to the detriment of the message they're trying to promote)
Pull it back to something like Reddit and you've still got some toxicity, but with the voting systems, people are somewhat invested enough in their profiles to remain some level of sane, but that voting system can artificially influence posts, especially as people start fishing for likes. So, then you have something like gamefaqs, which is smaller than reddit and 4chan, but is less civil than something like NeoGaf because some of these people have alt after alt to burn, retaining their relative anonymity.
Then, there are other small, specific sites. These take care of the anonymity aspect by being a more intimate environment. I was part of one that I had essentially taken over, lol, and I implemented a rating system for posts, and that had that same effect that I mentioned on Reddit, but worse. It simply made it easier to drive people out. This was a good thing at first in that it drove out some of the real trolls, but eventually it got too cliquey for new members to join unless they happened to fit the perfect desired profile. I believed in the system at first, but it eventually turned into just a way to bully people. I learned a valuable lesson there.
Now, I'm part of two sites primarily these days. This one, obviously, and a large, exclusive baseball related site that resembles the NeoGaf formula the most, only much more exclusive and much more of a hive mind. I stick with it because I've been a member for 8 years and it took me 6 years to even get in. And, it's still one of the best sources of information on the 'net for a lot of topics. There are also several prominent celebrities who are members, and it's kind of neat to interact with some of them like regular bros on the 'net.
This place is the ideal mix. It's a smaller community, there's no gimmicky system to keep people in line (hell, there doesn't even seem to be a specific rule stopping people from swearing, and people just tend to be respectful to others just by default), and there's good, intelligent people here that are drawn to it by a common subject matter that is particularly attractive to thoughtful people.
lt;dr (Just for you, NC
) : This place is a rare combo. Respect it, and it will respect you back.
