I think this board tends to drive out pretentious morons - those who try to espouse positions they can’t support with actual facts. The crowd here isn’t going to accept someone as an authority just because they can type.
Why thank you, Bippy. I’ll take that as a compliment. 
That jerk Fabulous Creature appears to have vanished completely, so I’ll say it does.
A request for a cite would flummox many an idiot, as would the need for a thesaurus nearby.
We abuse new morons to the point that few people would pay to stick around, and if they do, they usually get banned for doing what we can’t accuse them of doing.
So, yes, eventually.
A lot of boards I’ve tried devolve for the most part toward exchanges of the “Whatcha doin”/“Nuthin” type. I can only take so many empty threads about how “X sux”/“no way!!! ;-P”/“U suk” before I flee. This to say that other boards may drive me away, too.
As with the ignorance fight, it’s taking longer than they thought 
My post is my cite!
Or something like that.
Haven’t caught me yet!
Neener
0 u r 50 l33t. |-|/\xx0rz r00l, l00zr3 dru|!1!
I guess it’s time for me to leave, then.
Yeah, but Clarified butter!
Golly ghee, do you really mean it?
I bet the Moderators’ patience with pun thread hijacks is shortening these last couple of days.
I’m still a guest. My good time trail run is heading towards its final lap. I have but a small window to speculate the suspicion that I possess the calibre of an elite moron.
For a long time, the SDMB was my only message board experience, so I didn’t realize how good I had it. Within the past year and a half, I’ve started reading two other boards centered more around common interests/hobbies, and they’re totally different. On those boards, the posters will walk on eggshells so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of other posters. For example, if a question has been answered and someone else asks the same question, they will just answer it again instead of telling you to read the whole thread. We don’t suffer fools gladly here.
I think you have to adopt our customs and such in order to feel comfortable here–things like how a thread can just devolve into jokes, or how we’ll all roll our eyes if a poster makes a ridiculous, unsupported claim. If you’re on the outside, it might seem like like we all know certain inside jokes, or like we’re ganging up on someone, and that might be off-putting. It took me a while before I felt truly comfortable here, and I admit that once in a great while I still wonder about the existence of a SDMB clique.
Also off-putting: our lack of smilies. How am I expected to glean someone’s intent from just their words without 3 emoticons afterward? :rolleyes: 
Really? I’ve been here since '99 and I’ve never felt there was any clique. Yeah, there are prolific posters that everyone knows but they get their asses handed to them when they deserve it, same as anyone else.
Very clever (For clarification Skald was Fabulous Creature).
I think that the perception of a clique comes from the fact that some posters are simply more social than others.
I’ve been here since 10/99 (I used a different name before that - back then, there were no sock puppet rules, and I didn’t go about changing my name the right way).
In all of the time that I’ve been posting to the SDMB, I’ve only ever met one other Doper IRL. Though I’m now over a thousand miles away from her, she remains one of my best friends. God, I love this place.
I think you’re right, neutron star. It’s amazing to me when posters can remember details about other posters. I have trouble remembering what I’ve posted here, let alone what other people have posted. I also rarely look at usernames when I read threads…oops.
Anyway, I want to emphasize that I didn’t say there was or wasn’t a clique, just that an outsider might perceive a clique of some sort.
I’ve only been here for a few months, but I can confirm the observations of what other posters noted:
We enjoy expressing our thoughts through competent language use. Also, we are generally decent spellers and write in complete sentences. Except when we intentionally use phrases for dramatic effect. Like this.
We devour culture: books, movies, shows, and whatnot. We love quoting them and love it when others get our references.
The membership fee is an effective deterrent against most drive-by spammers and trolls. For those who can’t afford the fee, don’t lose hope; I’ve seen some generous members offer to cover memberships, especially for those who have written some lovely posts.
We recognize and harness the power of writing to inform, entertain, and persuade. I have learned, laughed, and have been whomped (had my worldview shaken) by a great many posts. If I ever questioned a social or political policy, I only need to go to GD to see a variety of perspectives that go beyond, “I’m right and you suck.”
Yes, the lack of avatars, sig lines, and images will turn away people who like shiny stuff. We don’t overuse smilies, either. Sometimes reading the SDMB reminds me of reading a book with no pictures.
We have well-rounded backgrounds and discuss a multitude of subjects. We don’t tolerate flame-wars of the geek-variety … the absence (or rarity) of Mac-vs-PC, Windows-vs-OS X-vs-Linux, Microsoft-vs-Google, Star Wars-vs-Star Trek is refreshing.
We encourage thoughtful posts. Anyone who trolls gets Modded or redirected to The Pit if it’s a personal issue with a poster. Posts here are generally polite, professional, and civil. I like that. Others (like morons) won’t.
We hate memes or behaviors taken from other boards. I have yet to see “Frist Post” or “But does it run Linux?”. We discourage top-posting (a good thing) and ASCII art (although the occasional color and font change is fun). Even Straight Dope memes are sparse. (As a newbie, though, I do admit to finding “1920-style Death Rays” and “Trench for 20 minutes” references amusing.)
We love minutiae. We scare people when we play Trivial Pursuit. When you combine that with the number of career specialists or hobbyists that we have here (see “Ask the ___” threads), you get some awesome responses that go beyond the casual “Wikipedia/Google is your friend” post.
Of course, we have our share of malcontents. The neat thing, though, is that one can ignore The Pit and therefore avoid most of the nastiness.