Way, way off tangent. But okay. A game's social grouping is often baggage that's part and parcel with the game, and it's very easy to produce combinations of rules and demographic targeting that are unworkable-generally, not a good parallel to the situation. (Producing strict anti-swearing rules enforced with banning seems like a bad mix with FPS, for instance, as would be lax offensiveness handling and an MMO.)
As you say, a forum's overall tone is representative of it, and people can be ran off by inordinate offensiveness, yes, but I don't think anyone's supporting the latter.
And also, I would like to point out that I predicted an overall negative reaction-the apparent result-to this, during the discussion with Hal beforehand, hence my initial unpleasant reaction to this. As you say, not that impossible to predict, in a general sense, though I sure as hell wouldn't say I was 100% sure to be right.
Also, targeted demographic handling of video games probably falls apart when you're dealing with a group of people that averages 125? IQ or so, like the DL. Things that seem to have tried to target a "smart person" demographic seem to be vastly hit and miss, from what I know, not that it's a demographic that's targetted as much as...well, any other that I can think of(perhaps with reason). Might be a false impression, maybe games are doing it all the time and it's just not as painfully obvious as it is with other demo targets, but.
