[projektir]

> As much as I hate CoD and wish the issues you highlighted were limited to the CoD community, they are not.

While I agree with the gist of your post, I can't help but feel that pointing out that it's not "special" is the opposite of helpful.

People are mostly equipped to notice problems in their ballpark, and are right to call out problems as they see them. Whether or not similar problems exist in another ballpark is beside the point. Even if other ballparks are worse it's beside the point!

I frequently play Dota 2 and it has similar problems and I don't want to see them there, either.

[robotkilla]

> I can't help but feel that pointing out that it's not "special" is the opposite of helpful.

I disagree -- I'm pointing out that the issue is not CoD or even online gaming, its a larger issue. You can't really address it on a small scale without understanding the bigger picture.

[projektir]

Can't you? There are lots of higher quality communities out there and if gaming ones were such it'd create pressure for people to improve or stay out. Right now, most gaming communities accept it because of the all-around "well all gaming communities are like this", which contains an implicit "and therefore it's OK and should not alarm you".

Pretty much all issues in life are systemic, this does not at all mean addressing them in a smaller area is ineffective. I'd say most people have a much better chance of addressing it in a smaller area than addressing the systemic problem. I don't see how I, as a gamer, can go modify how "young men" (assuming this generalization is correct) behave, but I can definitely discourage it in any gaming communities I'm a part of.

I don't think some other nice communities I'm in, if they followed the notion of "well, other communities are bad already and it's a systemic problem..." would have been successful.

[rhizome]

The bigger picture is unmoderated communities, and nobody said it was limited to CoD except you in saying you wished it was.