Decline of GQ?

Is it just me, or has General Questions become a lot less fun to read over the past few months?

It used to be that people would reply with funny, interesting and/or witty posts, as well as answering the question at hand, and sometimes meandering off-topic with interesting asides.

Nowadays, it seems that the only replies you get are from people with no sense of humour, half of whom reply pointing out a spelling mistake you have made, while introducing one of their own. The other half tell you exactly how stupid the question you just asked is, without giving you an answer.

Or is it just me?

It’s probably because a lot of the decent sort didn’t renew their subscription and haven’t found a question interesting enough to create a temporary sock to answer it.

It’s always gone through a few lows, though, when all the interesting questions have been answered and not a significant enough time has passed for them to be asked all over again. :slight_smile:

I haven’t noticed any decline, personally. Now the BBQ, that’s an entirely different matter…

I wouldn’t say much has changed over the last few months, I think that GQ has seen a huge let down since they went to subscriptions. That what where n00bs went first to pose a ponderable that has been answered 50 times before. Now that it’s a subscription service, the number of n00bs coming in has dwindled alot. Therefore alot of those random, trivial questions one comes up with don’t get asked.

On the otherhand, CS, GD, MPSIMS and IMHO have stayed string since those were alwyas the bastion of the long-time member. Those were the people that decided to stick around. Those are also the people who don’t really have questions to ask, only answers.

Thats why it’s sorta a shame that the “fighting ignorance” thing will eventually get stale. Sad to say…notto start a debate of course, it’s been beaten to death and I understand the realities here, but I find it impossible to argue that this place has become more about casually shooting the shit with people you already know instead of asking and answering questions and Cecil intended. We’ve got a playground, not a library these days. Cause we all know, no one would pay for the reference section in a library, but they’ll pay plenty for an amusement park…

Sorry for that grammatically and spelling challenged drivel…sigh

I think GQ has declined, but my reason differs from yours.

All too often I’ll keep my eye on a thread that asks a question I’ve been pondering, too. The first few replies will be jokes. Not a joke accompanying an attempt to answer the question, but just a joke. It’s very annoying. I don’t mind jokes, witty observations and other frippery after the question has been answered, or at least seriously attempted to be answered, but before? It’s quite frustrating.

UrbanChic, Stick in the Mud

Unfortunately, given the way they’re enforcing the rules, the latter is closer to appropriate posting behavior for GQ than the former. If I’m going to get banned for breaking the rules, I’d rather it wasn’t for posting a joke reply in GQ, so I don’t post there very much any more. Several times a day, I’ve got a response typed out and I think, “Wait a minute; what forum is this?” so I scroll up, see it’s in GQ, and hit the Back button.

At least the whole “google is your friend” crap seems to have quietened down. Why bother posting to tell me to look somewhere else? Why not google it and post a link to the information the person is looking for. Google is my friend? I’m guessing google is their only friend. But posting a reply with a joke then getting three pages of the same running gag without any attempt to address the OP - grrrrrrrr…

OK - I’ve vented. Maybe it’s just one of those cyclical things.

It is school vacation season in the US. The internet in general is not so much fun in the summer.

I agree. “Google is your friend,” as a response, especially to new posters, is just mean. I’ve learned many things from replies to questions that, had the OP taken a few seconds to research it, might have otherwise gone unposted. Sometimes, you don’t know you want to know something you don’t know until someone posts a question in GQ.

Google was my friend, but then he made disparaging comments about my SUV and helped an underage acquaintance get an abortion. He dug up some nasty facts about my candidate of choice and made fun of my ribeyes, trying to force me to get the vegetarian. He made my neighbor’s yard greener than mine and it’s because of him that the wife’s credit card bills are collapsing under their own weight. If Google is your friend, tell him that I’m coming for him… and that he’s going down.

Well the “Google is your friend” phrase got pretty obnoxious pretty fast but I don’t think it’s always wrong to chide someone into attempting some research. If you could have typed the OP subject line into google, hit “I feel lucky” and gotten your answer then it is a bit of a waste of GQ space.

I personally have a rule for GD/GQ: If I have a joke or side comment that I feel I need to post then I must also either have one non-“me too” or new fact addressing the OP to tag it onto. If that seems impossible I hit the back button. Can’t always resist, heh. But when I remember the rule it often gets me a little more into a subject I was prepared to be glib about. Or I realize my joke ain’t that funny.

Actually this subject got me down memory lane.

I seem to remember that in the “old days”, GeneralQuestion OPs were a little more crafted as well. When I asked what I thought might be considered a tinfoil hat style question in GQ I felt it was neccessary to have an OP with some meat to it or I’d get told to “look it up, crackpot”. Could be I only remember it that way though.

My only response to that question was a Googler(now much reformed) to tell me they were unsuccessful. Waah.

I totally agree that posters should do some research first, even something as basic as putting the question into google. It’s just that others (who should have known better) acted as if google was the be-all and end-all, the all seeing eye, the Great Karnak of the internet, which makes Straightdope pretty redundant if you think about it. And anyway, even if you got your answer straight away from google, maybe other people on the board appreciated the question, a question they may have never considered before.

But, yeah. Point taken.

I post less, even when I have time, for two basic reasons.

First, each day I visit I see several questions that have already been asked before, and answered, completely and fully, in the past. But for some reason people either can’t or won’t search to even see if the question has been asked before. Or, they searched and used the wrong terms, or, through no fault of their own, the search failed. Whatever the case, it’s frustrating. And some people who were once frequent GQ posters are just too tired of doing the work for people by searching and then posting the link. Unless it’s one of the two topics that directly interests me that day, for example, I no longer have the time to spend on it.

Second, I’m tired of coming into a thread and finding people posting the wrong answers, repeatedly, with impunity. And I’m not talking about a person guessing once, and I’m not talking about newbies either - there are people who consistantly come in and post along the lines of “Well, I don’t know, and I didn’t do any research, and I didn’t use Google, and I didn’t search on here, and I have no experience, but I think the answer is this.” Are post counts that important that people have to do this? It’s especially discouraging when several people post the wrong answer or are just making WAGs and none of them, all paid Members, has even done a search to find the correct answer, posted several times before on here.

Even more discouraging is when the question is something that was covered quite well in a Staff Report by myself or one of the other Staff, or by Cecil, and yet instead of people linking to that as the answer (or at a minumum, supporting info), they make WAGs and jokes and slip in “Bush/Republicans Sux!” asides, etc.

CarnalK has exactly the right idea - any post in GQ which contains humour should also contain valuable information. People see Cecil’s humour, where he makes a wisecrack but also dispenses fact, and try to emulate it - only they miss the whole “dispenses fact” part of it. I try every time I make a joke to include humour, unless the question has already been pretty much fully answered.

All that having been said, I don’t know if it’s a big enough thing that it’s a problem, or more of a problem than it was before. I read GQ a fair bit, and over time general perceptions accumulate. I also don’t know exactly if there is anything to be done about it, either.

I routinely get email where people don’t even feel disposed to post a comment or a question to the board; they write me and ask me to do it for them. I also get a lot of "Tell Cecil . . . "

Some have told me they just can’t be bothered with all that registration crap; they just want someone to do this for them. Others want a personal reply from Cecil.

I refer them all (politely) to the board. I never see them again.

I don’t get this. If you’re moved enough to make a comment or ask a question, why not follow through?

your humble TubaDiva

Good points. I get the same to a much more limited extent. That is truly discouraging as well.

(I also had someone mail me to ask if I could do a Staff Report on a subject of their choice. I referred them instead to a lengthy thread on the SDMB here where several smart people (not me) answered their question. Their response was “Never mind, didn’t know you were oh so busy.” :confused: )

The internet gods are humourous. Una was one of the Dopers I had hoped would take a stab at my inorganic oil production thread I linked to from way back when. I had far too much pride to do any “paging” posts though. Haw.

[hijack]Hmm…well, I do miss things with work taking me away for days or weeks at a time. Also, your question from July 2002 is more difficult to answer than it seems - there is not a quick and easy way to prove inorganic origin, or to disprove it. Sorry I didn’t take a stab at it.[/hijack]

Q freaking E.D, and other quality posters, are what I have to blame it on. They are just gone. Q.E.D was, in his hey-day, someone so full of knowledge and humor that one could scroll through the entire GQ forum and see his posts in 60%+ of the threads.

Even more than that, it just seems kind of old now, to me atleast. I used to attempt to answer math, science, or various other questions and just kind of stopped. It went from my favorite forum to the one I visit least next to the one about Cecil.

Really, it’s like Ashbury Park minus the prostitutes.

Don’t worry about it Una Persson, I’m not too miffed when my questions go unanswered. I just thought it was a pretty funny coincidence me posting about it and you responding right afterwards here.