Except in the Pit. There, it was all “FOAD” and “Fuck you, you goat-felching pervert,” and general free-wheeling flamewars. Which was kinda the whole point - a place to blow off steam that might (or might not) be linked to discussions elsewhere on the board.
Honestly, about the time that the board was being cleaned up to make it commercially palatable (shift to ‘pay model’), a lot of the spice was leached out, and I left for more than a decade - it wasn’t the same.
That? That’s been here for forever.
I’m with you there, except I think some of the restrictions added to the Pit made the rest of the board a little more testy.
I’ve personally seen what I think the op is describing too and it is not snark. Snark is humor and should be clever albeit sarcastic and sometimes even biting. Clever snark is almost always appreciated here and is the tradition.
What I’m seeing is posters reacting in seriously offended ways for very little cause, posters assuming ill intent on the part of others and reacting consistent with that.
One example that jumps into my mind is this recent IMHO thread related to adoption.
By the second response ill intent was assumed and a question that could reasonably have been asked out of a simple desire to reduce one’s own ignorance was responded to not so much with snark as with hostility and that hostility was later defended on the basis of how “insensitive” the op was.
And there is also the issue of those who passively aggressively do that which they know annoys others for no apparent reason other than that they know it annoys some others and is allowable. Yes the no caps approach, the “let’s throw it the quarry …” one, the “Regards …” one … so on. Once it was only one who knowing that how he posted was fingernails on a chalkboard to many others kept it up.
Better than elsewhere on the net? I don’t spend much time elsewhere on the net so cannot say. But both thinner skinned and more frequent cases of trying to be intentionally irritating with no humor involved than it used to be? Yes, to my own sense of it.
I am NOT suggesting any change in moderation, just sharing my sense. This after all is IMHO not ATMB.
Yeah, I’ve been here for awhile, and I actually find the boards less mean-spirited and vicious than they used to be back in the day. There was also a lot more IRL drama, too, from what I remember. I have a feeling people really are looking at the past through rose-colored glasses and the sanitizing filter of nostalgia.
I meant to mention this, but it slipped my mind as I was drawn back to work stuff - the biggest forum I participate in is rpg.net, which has about three times the active users that the SDMB does, and - anecdotally - it’s a hell of a lot more civil.
:**points to ‘Straight Dope Message Board - Your direct line to thousands of the smartest, hippest people on the planet, plus a few total dipsticks.’ in the URL:
I came in here for an argument!
A number of prolific, but nasty and mean-spirited, posters from my early days at the SDMB have been banned or just gone away. So, yeah, the level of gratuitous meanness is actually less than it was back then. However, it has been replaced with a culture of offense-seeking and scolding. I’m pretty sure that doesn’t count as an improvement.
I don’t feel like the “offense-seeking” behavior, as you phrase it, has gone up, but I might actually agree with you that some of the more scolding, sanctimonious, tut-tutting type of behavior does seem to be a bit more prominent.
I make no judgments on whether it’s an improvement or not in an overall board culture sense, but I kind of prefer the more chaotic board from the early 2000s for its entertainment value, even though there were a lot more assholes around. I think a lot of people would prefer the later Dope, though.
So the board is no longer populated by people seeking victims, but instead is populated by people seeing to be victims.
It’s a shame they missed each other, they really could have had a nice symbiotic relationship.
Well, that’s not surprising - the safety vent has been tied shut. 
I mean, I really think people forget how “PC” things were back then. (I don’t want to get into deconstruction what “PC” is, but let’s go with the popular idea of “PC,” which I have some issues with.) I went to college in the mid-90s, and my recollection is that things were much more “PC” back then than they are now. I mean, it became cool to be “anti-PC.” Look at South Park and that style of humor, which showed up in the late 90s as a reaction to the PC climate of the early 90s. That people think it’s more “PC” today just boggles my mind.
Clearly you were never on Usenet back then.
The thing with Usenet is that you had to know what yuo were doing to get into most message boards - which meant that even the trolls had at least some level of education.
Indeed I was. Clearly you haven’t seen the comments section of, well, pretty much any website these days. A magnitude worse, in my opinion, of what I saw on Usenet. At least with Usenet, as mentioned above, you needed a modicum of skill and intelligence to figure out how to use the thing. Now any monkey with an iPad can fling their shit over every corner of the internet.
So, is it still September?
Yes, i agree, The attitude here is much better than on most of the rest of the nets. But, is that really enough? That we’re not as nasty as everyone else.
I was a long time lurker on this board, and I learn something almost every time I come here, and the vast majority of the discussions are civil, but we can always be better. I love that there are regular contributors with a wide range of expertise who are willing to share their knowledge and are, for the most part, patient with the slow learners. I love that there is a wide range of political and philosophical thinking, and that there are people here not only willing but proud to espouse their beliefs even when they know they’re in the minority and may get shouted down.
The Straight Dope is, to my mind, far and away the most diverse and erudite board I’ve found, warts and all. But, maybe we can all be a little more patient with each other.
mc
Thank you for the consideration you are showing to others in this post.
Seriously. “Regards …” and “Let’s throw it in the quarry …” never particular bothered me much (I have my browser automatically change those phrases into a symbol that to me looks like an asshat - ⍤ - it’s actually a dentistry symbol apparently - to give me a laugh when it comes up) but the fact that many had asked politely for it to cease and desist, as many did find those posting tics annoying, and the posters persist, for no apparent reason other than that they can, had. Your willingness, after some thought, to modify your style is in contrast, refreshing.
I don’t agree at all. It used to be far more harsh. Every time I see links from older stuff, I see people being bigger dicks, and more people acting like it should just be accepted. Look at the Pit now, for example. When’s the last huge pitting?
I will say the anger increased after Trump’s campaign and election, but that’s to be expected. There’s just so much to be angry at involving him and his followers and just our country as a whole.
But, discarding that, I’d say the snark is lower than it’s ever been, with posters that used to seem normal (e.g., Shodan) seeming overly snarky now, since they haven’t changed in that regard.
I’m much, much more comfortable here than I was when I first got here, excluding the Raffers who occasionally come back to harass me, which I just put on ignore and go about my day.
I do think we’re letting too many bigoted idiots in without getting rid of them, but that’s even more testament to the place being nicer. We’re too nice to get rid of these people.
I also believe that Jonathan Chance has completely changed GD to where the whole “attack the post, not the poster” concept is gone, and he regulates it entirely based on whether what he reads makes him angry, so that definitely changed the tone there.
I will admit that I think Miller is a bit meaner than he used to be, but the Pit is still nicer than it used to be.
So, yeah. I don’t see it. At least, not going by my own time here and what I’ve seen in older threads. There may be a local change, but I’d still say that only happened around Trump. But, in general, it feels nicer here.
I don’t agree that it’s anywhere near nicer than most other forums (unless we’re talking 4chan or YouTube or something). I’d never been banned from anywhere before coming here. But I’ve carried over the tone I picked up here, and wound up banned in a few places. I’ve hurt people I didn’t mean to.
But it still feels nicer than it used to be. People stand up for people being treated badly. Snark is downplayed and more humorous. Mods care more about how mean people are. And a lot of the meaner people got driven away.
Yes, but that’s not just saying, “No, it isn’t!”