I realise this is like waving a red flag in front of a furious bull but its something I’ve been thinking about for a while. In general I enjoy reading the SD and sometimes participating but I’ve found myself increasingly reluctant to do so because I feel that in a lot of threads and discussions people quickly come in with needlessly hostile and aggressive responses.
I’m not going to link to any examples because I don’t want to make this personal but even in General Questions I’ve noticed people asking what seems to me to be a fairly innocuous question and being met with snarky and unpleasant replies and putdowns. I can’t help but think that more than a few potential contributors have been put off by the reception they’ve received. I read something and think, ‘There are so many different ways you could have put across the same point without being hostile and negative’.
I’ve stopped responding to several threads because while I’m perfectly happy to engage in a lively debate I don’t like insults and dealing with rude people, I get enough stress in real life without dealing with it online.
It seems to me that rather than an exchange of ideas some posters view threads as a competition to ‘win’ even if that shuts down an interesting discussion.
The board used to be a lot more … friendly, for lack of a better word. But there were a series of rules changes that seemed to highlight divisions among the board population. A lot of them fled for the hills - this place is a shadow of what it used to be. The heightened polarization of the current political climate hasn’t helped.
Except for the political threads, I don’t see a lot of bullying. Compared to all the other forums I frequent, this one still has very high quality of discourse. You can ask for what other people here have experienced with some topic and get fairly helpful answers. Unlike a hearing aid forum (as an example) where I was trying to compare notes with how other people deal with wearing glasses and hearing aids at the same time, and someone gave the Classic Internet Bully response: “if you’re having so much effing trouble, why don’t you just send them back?” :rolleyes:
I also like the mature/adult demographic here, as opposed to most other forums that COULD be interesting if not for all of the ten-year-olds participating.
Snark can be clever and funny without being mean. That distinction is a mark of the best posters. There is a lot of needless enmity lately. Meanwhile numbers are heading down.
This place** is** a shadow of what it used to be. Seems to be a theme in the wider world too.
Straight Dope Message Boards, located in Snark Castle in the Snark Quarter of Snarkton, capital city of Snarkvania… was once kinder and gentler?
Have you seen the historical threads? Surely you have. They get resurrected often enough. They were vicious bloodthirsty things.
If anything, this place has lost a lot of its meanness. The snark is either more whimsical or more reserved for the justly deserving. I’m OK with that, bein’s as I’m singularly unqualified to engage in battles of wits.
ETA: Or what the esteemed steatopygia just said, with more brevity and clarity.
I’ve been a member for over 16 years, during which I’ve aged from “new adult” to “full-ass adult”. I used to bumble into threads, get my ass handed to me, and disappear from the Dope for months at a time. I haven’t disappeared from the Dope for several years, now, though. Either I’ve grown up or the board has, as some others say, lost its teeth.
Either way, I don’t think its attitude problem is a problem.
Yes, compared to practically any other message board, the SDMB is, on the whole, remarkably civilized, and most of the posters are incredibly well-spoken.
But, I concur with several other posters on this thread that, over the past few years, the general tone here has (at least, in my perception) gotten harsher, and I’m saddened by knowing that familiar voices, whose posts I’ve appreciated and respected, have departed due to this.
Some of Cecil Adams’ columns (particularly the earlier ones) display quite a bit of snark, so the attitude on the message board, to a certain extent, is modeled on that.
I think the SDMB is, overall, pretty civil, and actually non-snarky. I don’t think Cecil Adams himself ought to be such a snark, but that’s too bad.
But - I’m not sure if this is within what the OP means, but I think the Dope has a tendency to deliberately nitpick a statement or question as much as possible. So for instance, if someone asks, “Is it unmanly for a man to wear a skirt?” someone will inevitably jump in with, “Nope, Scottish kilts are manly!” when in fact that probably isn’t what the question-asker means. Or, other instances - a lot of Dopers like to deliberately look for the 1% exception to something, rather than the 99% broad gist of what something means.
Outside of political threads (most dopers are understandably pretty pissed off by the political climate now) it seems to me that nearly all the posts are quite reasonable. And the ones that aren’t get slapped down pretty quickly by a mod. Often too quickly, IMHO. I have looked at the pit only once, but if you go there, you are asking for it.
i’ve noticed quite a bit of animosity in threads on topics some of the members consider closed for discussion, ie; antivax, evolution, religion in general but the existence of god in particular, young earth. . .you get the idea. now i understand that these topics have been discussed to death here and elsewhere and many are tired of having to re-argue the case, but we have to remember that there are people coming of intellectual age everyday, and these discussions might be something new to them, but answering a poster’s query on the pros and cons of antivax vs autism by saying “they’re idiots” is just rude and does nothing to promote the cause of “fighting ignorance”
so yeah, i would agree with the op that there is an attitude among some members.
Cite examples of good-faith requests for information or evidence on these topics that are treated so poorly? I think the board welcomes and responds helpfully to genuine open-minded questions. But the majority of OPs on these topics are not good-faith questions, they seek to promote a religious, anti-vax or anti-evolution viewpoint that has no regard for reason or evidence. As such, they get the treatment that they deserve.
I don’t have a specific example that leaps immediately to mind (I haven’t really been reading the board for a few weeks) and I’m just about to go to bed but I’ll keep an eye out for something to show what I mean.
