I deal with thousands of bug reports and have a well-honed routine approach to try to get to the bottom of the issue effectively. Sometimes this can be frustrating for all parties, yes. However it is by no means an excuse for abusive behavior. This is not about my feelings, or trying to control people, or trying to be an authoritarian dictator who controls everything. This is about setting basic rules for civilised behavior.
For example, we have new guidelines for conduct in bug reports, because some people's conduct is completely awful and unacceptable. Take a look through those guidelines. Do you think any of them are unreasonable? No. They are simple, basic, reasonable rules that anyone should be able to abide by.
Unfortunately some people are unable to abide by these basic rules of civilised conduct. Those people are no longer welcome on the forums. Some of those people may decide that they've been unfairly treated and in order to cover up their abhorrent behavior, try to portray me or anyone else at Scirra as silencing debate or ignoring problems. This is complete nonsense. These people are defending their right to be abusive. These people must be removed from the community. As I said: this is about setting basic rules for civilised conduct.
I am happy to discuss our rules in more detail if anyone has questions about them. However if you disagree with the principle of setting basic rules of conduct, then please, leave, go and use someone else's software, and please go and post regularly in their community instead!
There is a major difference between any frustrations that come up in dealing with a bug report, and downright abusive behavior. It is also the responsibility of the moderators to have some degree of proactivity. On the forums we do not sit around idly waiting for flamewars to kick off and then turn up when people start reporting posts. We are proactive in identifying poor behavior and dealing with it before it becomes an issue, not after. Anyone who runs any kind of online community should have a similar approach.
I must emphasise I'm not trying to take control here. It is also ridiculous to suggest I am trying to remove criticism. There are literally hundreds of critical posts on these forums, and more are posted regularly. This is obvious to anyone who regularly reads the forum. We still allow this despite how tough it can be to plough through reams of criticism on a daily basis. It is rare that we close these threads entirely, and even when we do often it's long after everyone's had plenty of time to say what they want. We always have a good reason to take action. Pointing at such examples and saying we're shutting down conversation is misleading and is arguing in favour of a community that tolerates abuse.
All I am asking for is to have basic, enforced rules about civilised behavior. If you dispute this, then I will do everything I can to distance ourselves from that part of the community. Note this is not an attempt to take control. You are of course free to run an independent chat room as you see fit. I mainly want to encourage you to improve the community. Failing that, we will remove ourselves from it.
Having said that, I have one minor request that I believe is reasonable. Please rename the channel to include the term "unofficial". I am sure you would agree that you aren't trying to pretend to be an official part of Scirra.