:smack: - should read - “…circles I moved in.”
Then I shall count myself among the few because I tend to assume female unless the username or post reeks of testasterone (did I spell that correctly?)
the OP speaks only of the discussion specific forums. What about in the MPSIMS? Are the demographics there any different? or do all Dopers fit into the criteria stated above? (I am neither gay nor taking any post graduate courses, but I am Jewish and do tend to lean a little to the left.
Christian fundamentalists are under-represented? Not possible.
Funny, if you had asked me what sub-population is most noticeably over-represented here, I would have answered “atheists.”
Atheists are what, 60% or 70% of dopers?
But the sportos, the motorheads, sluts, bloods, waistoids, and dweebies are clearly underrepresented here.
OTOH, we do have a few dickheads. 
Considering how many IT people inhabit this board, thats statistically impossible. Hard scientists, mathematicians, writers, you can’t toss a packet here without hitting an engineer. Aim carefully you could even hit a Mythbuster.
I personally would seriously consider the dope a sort of nerd mecca. Every nerd should visit here at some time in their lives, if only to read and stand in awe at the beauty of the nerd motherland.
This is exactly what I was going to say. I think it is too simplistic to just talk liberal and conservative.
I also do think there used to be more conservatives around (although still perhaps somewhat more toward the libertarian side than the social conservative side) who seem to have disappeared, or at least are posting a lot less, in the last few years. Some of them might claim that they were run off although I think a more realistic explanation is it became harder and harder for them to, in particular, defend the current administration (and Congress). Or to put it another way: The facts have an anti-Bush bias.
Well don’t just stand there, get new facts!! 
I agree that the L-R balance of the board used to be much more even back in 1999-2002. Then along came Iraq. But like online generally, the Dope is much more libertarian, much better educated, much more skeptical, much more tolerant of differences, much less fundie, than the population in general.
But the Dope has always seemed to have much more of an abundance of women posters than the online world generally, which is a plus.
Hey, some of us choose to use their intelligence for evil
Any “liberal” bias should also take into account the not-insignificant minority of non-US dopers, most of whom, even if considered conservative in their home country, find US-style conservativism to be a freakish political anomaly.
Nah. Lemme lay it down for you: the prime demographic for Dopers is fact freaks. Like a junkie’s jones, fact freaks crave data, informtion, facts. Normal people break open a bag of Fritos, fact freaks snack on an almanac. We keep a vast compendium of utterly useless information right at hand, available at the instant in the unlikely event one might prove relevent. Or even remotely relevant, we are generous in our appraisal.
Theres a niche industry in publishing built around our craven wants. We peruse the bookstore looking serious, pondering literature, but if our eye perchance befall on one of those books that are nothing more than a fact salad…694 Things Not Remotely Interesting to Anyone But You, You Pathetic Loser, Remainder House, 2005…we will buy it, we cannot help it. We will buy a copy of the existential essays of Paul Ruben as cover, or hint at the cashier that Our Precious is “for a friend”. But we will have opened the first page before we’re out the freaking door!
And half the stuff in it, we already know. Woe.
Fact freaks are loony lefty, tighty righty, straight, queer, butch, femme, top, bottom, innie, outie, purebred and mongrel. We have no other defining characteristic, but our harrowing hunger for more. More. And still more.
A friend gave me my first SD book, I bought the other one the next day, having devoured the first. I have pestered booksellers to distraction, shivering in need.
There is no cure.
And Dopers do both.
If I was writing a personal ad, this would be it!
Peewee Herman wrote existential essays?!?
My dear elucidator, who may be my political opposite(I’m not sure, i don’t really care, but I usually enjoy reading his words), has nailed it for me. I’m a Christian, a Republican, a musician, a professional computer geek, a member of the NRA who doesn’t own a gun, a supporter of same-sex marriage, I’m a misfit in almost any company, and I’m in the minority on most topics here. I love this place. I like to know things, to learn things. I’m the guy IRL who is considered the expert on almost everything, and here, I converse with people who know a boatload more than me about just about everything.
I know you are, but why?
Actually, then along came the 2000 elections. I would extend the period to 2004, because that was the election many Dopers considered theirs by right. Oops.
Probably an unanswerable question, but I doubt the boards have ever been close to balanced in terms of left vs. right. I have been a member since 2000, and it has always been this way. The lefties have been more abusive lately, IMO, which drove manhattan away, everyone’s favorite whipping boy december was banned for embarassing the Left bigtime, and here we are.
True about the over-representation of libertarians. We have relatively few conservatives, but more libs.
But the notion that the Dope is “tolerant” of political differences is pretty laughable.
Regards,
Shodan
You might want to make a contribution to this IMHO thread: Banned/dropped-out Dopers retrospective.
Hey, WAITAMMINNIT . . .
You can’t. fluiddruid has already locked it.
Worst. Board. Policy. EVER. :mad:
For the rest, (most) left Dopers are (usually) at least willing to engage right-wingers seriously, addressing their arguments in point-by-point terms. (As opposed to how we would engage, say, some equivalent of Timecube Guy.) But at some point, as specific points of difference are addressed and gradually resolved or not, such a debate is likely to get down to essentials – conflicting fundamental world-views and value systems – the point at which the debaters really have nothing to say to each other, other than stating their positions – and when that happens, it’s bound to get shrill. That’s the nature of the beast.
Started a Pit thread. All are invited. Bring Your Own Rants.
Balderdash, sir! Tommyrot!
We have Mods assigned to the task of abuse-prevention. Is it your assertion that the Enlightened Ones, who sit at the right hand of The Cecil, are biased in their enforcement? You have, of course, definitive substantiation for this claim? At your fingertips, as it were?
To my recollection, the reasons offered for the banning of December bear no resemblance to your assertion. Lying, were they?
Did you really expect to get away with that? Honestly?