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.