I suppose… But, then, I didn’t claim I was particularly smart!
All I know for certain is that the dumbest commenters, by FAR, are the Breitbart commenters.
Even YOU Ditka must acknowledge this. Go on, admit it. They are the worst.
As others have mentioned, this board still has roots in the Straight Dope column. So, you (the OP) might want to take a few moments to read some of the columns, old or new. “Smart” can mean many things … but do we at least tend to be curious, well-read, and interested in facts (even when expressing or contemplating opinions)? Yes.
But we have fun, too (though not maliciously at the expense of each other). As Jack Nicholson said in The Brightness, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” 
I’m dumb as a box of rocks, but hang out here hoping that some of the Smart Stuff will rub off on me eventually.
In my favour*, yes, I can punctuate and use paragraphs…
*That’s how the really smart people spell it btw.
Let me just put this in for comparison… At a recent forum I went to, there was a poster who constantly and consistently posted nothing but stupid Donald Trump memes, juvenile political attacks (“Obummer”, “Killary”, etc.), and hate speech. Really just the dumbest kind of alt-right troll. That forum didn’t ban him, or even ask him to maybe cut it out a bit. There were a lot of posters arguing at or around that intellectual level, which drove down the overall level of discourse, even if there were some really bright people arguing at the margins (shoutouts to Zippy2006), and eventually a lot of those smart people wandered off to find less stupid grounds. On Straightdope, he wouldn’t last two weeks.
The forum climate here is legitimately more inquisitive, curious, fact-based, and intelligent than almost any other forum I have ever seen, with perhaps the exception of certain dedicated science- or tech-based forums, which don’t tender political discussion. It’s also far better equipped to deal with trolls, or the intentionally obtuse. Shoutouts to the moderators for that.
I’m too lazy to google it, but there is at least one study that shows that most people believe they are smarter than the average. In other words, asking someone if (s)he thinks the group (s)he belongs to is particularly smart, will not bring reliable results. 
You’re thinking of the Dunning-Kruger effect:
Sorry, no. I was thinking of the number 17. 
In fairness, the OP included “educated” on that “etc” list; I don’t know how likely you are to be wrong about how smart you are – but I’m guessing you get the answer right when you’re asked to state your highest level of education.
I don’t know about a cite, but personally I’ve founded that arguments and discussions almost anywhere else online are trivially easy compared to Dope discussions. For me, the Dope is like a baseball batter swinging a weighted bat to make the real swing easy – the “training” provided by Dope arguments makes arguments elsewhere much easier to win.
Sure we is, who says we ain’t?
So much this. I’ve been to a handful of other forums, and I often find myself the smartest guy in the room. Here, I often find that I have little to nothing to contribute to threads - someone smarter already said what I wanted to say, and better than I would have. 
The front page of the Dope claims we are the smartest, hippest people on the planet, with a few total dipsticks.
The first claim is probably an exaggeration.
Regards,
Shodan
It’s called illusory superiority or the Dunning–Kruger effect. IOW, stupid people think they are smarter than they are because they are too stupid to know what they don’t know.
Average intelligence people wouldn’t know that.
Like I know I’m a fairly mediocre engineer because I didn’t get particularly good grades in my engineering program. Still makes me smarter than the average idiot who can’t add up his change because “math’s hard”.
Technically that’s one claim, so there isn’t really a “first”. There’s a first part of the claim, I’ll grant.
Whut?
Regards,
Shodan
You spelled it wrong. It’s “wut”, no punctuation, like this:
wut
This right here is the correct answer.
I don’t see a lot of evidence the SDMB is used by a group of genuises. What it does have, though, is:
- Strictly enforced standards of civil dialogue and message board etiquette, and
- An entrenched culture of expectation of logical and sources arguments.
If in fact the average IQ of an SDMB user is precisely 100, with a normal distribution, but you enjoy the benefits of those two points,** the discussion will inevitably appear very intelligent as compared to any sort of message board without those things.**
Suppose I took a bunch of my buddies and had them do the following two things:
- On Saturday, we sit around and discuss a book we’ve all read.
- On Sunday, we go to a football game.
On Saturday’s we’ll look smart, and on Sunday we’ll look like raving idiots. People’s apparent intelligence is highly context-dependent.
Indeed. Sometimes I’ll get into debate with friends on FB. It often feels like I’m sparring with a 5yo. Sometimes I’ll even hold back because I feel embarrassed for the guy I’m debating with.
And then I come here feeling like the village idiot.
Just from the little lurking around I’ve done, and my experience with other boards, the structure of the system seems to support mature, civil conversation more so than others. This seems to foster a more mature, civil posting culture.