This is a common idea we see thrown out a lot around here, so I’m curious to see what the populace in general thinks. The question is simple: are the boards of today stupider than the day you joined (or started lurking, or whatever), or not? You can define “stupider” however you want, except that I want to clarify that I’m talking about the intelligence of the membership, rather than the quality of the moderating, or the rationality of the rules, or anything else.
There also seems to be an idea that there’s a split between “old-timers” and newer members, so I’ve included a completely arbitrary time division of five years to see if that has an effect; five years being roughly half of the time I’ve been here.
PS. Voting is private; no one will see what you voted for. And let’s avoid making this personal: “it’s been stupider since XXXXX joined” is unlikely to be helpful.
Of course not. I’ve seen a lot of the early crap that was posted on these boards (because google indexed all the old stuff, too). There are more subject matter experts here now than ever in the board’s history, and mods deal with off-topic, stupid shit, and spam much more efficiently now than they used to. Sure there’s a lot of shitposting that still goes on, but by and large I’d say that people get really good, useful answers to their questions almost 100% of the time.
I said it was more stupid but that was due to a stupid mistake on my part; I checked the wrong stupid box. I intended to say that it was not more stupid.
It seems there’s always a couple dozen people that post a lot. another 100 or so that post, but not every day, then lots of people like me that don’t post much and mostly lurk. The first group tends to change over time, always keeping a few old-timers from month to month. Some of the frequent posters are very entertaining and give great answers and/or advice and then life happens and they don’t post much or at all, like Eve, who recently returned. Overall, I think going to pay to post drove a lot of people away, returning to free posting privileges increased the pool, but I don’t think we’re back to the number we once had. I think we have fewer nutjobs and the ones we get are driven away by the ones that are here, which makes the board less stupid, but also a little less interesting. Like the person that wanted to talk about cattle mutes. That was a pip, but not much to learn in their threads.
I have been active on other sites forover 10 years. In that time I think I have seen a gross decline in logic and evidence based positions. It is amazing how much faith many people put in their own limited experience. They generalize from a few or even one case. They ignore scientific studies. Of course, some ‘‘scientific’’ studies should be ignored.
So maybe I haven’t been here long, but I am finding fewer and fewer threads worth reading or posting to. Maybe some see that as an imporvement.
It’s not. It is less polite like a couple that have heard each others stories one too many times. Especially since the economic downturn. I also think people have gotten tired of answering the same questions over and over and instead of taking a break from the board or just not replying they gotten snarky to the OP.
This. I haven’t been here for too long, but every time I am linked to a zombie post (and don’t realize it) I always think “Huh, this is an entertaining thread.” There’s just nobody like Master Wang- Ka around anymore.
