I’ll try to post more, if you think it will help! 
I’ve been here a long time. 
Overall I think things have *improved * over time.
While I do think that the board might be at the low end of the pendulum swing, I don’t much care. I’ve been here for a while, but I never really felt all that much community here, perhaps because I’ve never really been noticed. I’m not an expert or resource on anything, and I don’t hold particularly strong viewpoints and thus don’t have much to debate.
I view this board very much like a tool. A go-to place that I know I can go to to get an answer to a puzzling question, satisfy curiosity about something, or simply browse through topics for my own education much like I might flip to a random page in the encyclopedia for fun. A core group of extremely smart subject matter experts whose names I recognize, though they certainly don’t recognize me (like Q.E.D., Qadgop, Bricker, just to name a few), conscientious modding, generally on-topic discussion, and a lack of the seemingly compulsory internet garbage like animated GIFs, avatars, and everything else, is precisely what keeps me here.
I view posters such as the OP, who are disappointed in recent quality of the board, much the same way I view people who nitpick and critique every new movie or TV episode that comes out – they’re entitled to their opinions, I don’t hold it against them, I sometimes enjoy reading them, but ultimately I think they take it all too seriously. The board still does what I expect it to do…except when the damn thing keeps timing out. Grrrr.
(Shagnasty makes a good point about how much better things actually are now in terms of performance, compared to 5 years ago)
I think that’s a very interesting point, and my gut feeling is to say that I believe it is a part of the effect.
I just also agree that some of the shimmer has worn off. I think it was more exciting before simply because it was younger, the community of veteran posters were still getting to know each other, we weren’t locked into the same never-ending political debates, our dedicated posters didn’t have as many other places to go, etc.
For me personally, the biggest effect is that I read the boards all the way back in the AOL days, I joined there, and made an account here back in 2000. But by the time I really began to feel comfortable getting active on the board, it’s like all the teams have picked their kids, and I’m stuck on the outside. Maybe that’s being a little too whiny or self-absorbed, but it’s my subjective reason for feeling like the board isn’t as exciting as it was.
Overall, like many of the others posters in this thread, I still find the SDMB to be the best message board on the web for what I want out of one, and there’s still a lot of great posters and other benefits to coming here.
PS. Yes, I’m a big believer in the philosophy of “why say in 5 words what I can say in 500?”
No, I can’t recall where that (paraphrased) quote is from. But I know a doper recently used it in reference to Tolkien. Much as I love the writer, it’s certainly true, and it’s the kind of wit that draws me to the Straight Dope.
It’s me, isn’t it?
So does that mean you never voice any disappointment over anything you don’t take very seriously? If I complain my favorite chocolate bar just changed their recipe, am I taking chocolate bars too seriously? Seems a bit like a, perhaps subconscious, belittling of people you disagree with, IMHO.
This board (and all boards) goes in cycles for me. Ogre, you might be at the bottom of one now. For me, I’m kinda halfway up (or down).
Looking beyond these cycles (which go for months) at the longer term (years), I honestly believe the SDMB is slightly better now. Sure, I get nostalgic for some of the old stuff, but I can remember when newbies (ie. anyone with less than about 3000 posts) were treated with borderline rudeness - newbie makes a very, very funny post and it gets resoundingly ignored, then one of the celebrities of the day makes a marginal funny and the thread would blow out to three pages of “Lol! Good one!” replies. I can remember when I wouldn’t go into GD because it was ONLY about abortion and guns. I can remember when the Pit was much, much nastier than it is now, and not in a good way. Again, these “celebrities” or self-proclaimed Kings/Queens of The Pit would just use the forum as a personal masturbatory aid, and everybody would laud them for it. Not so much now.
Think of the SDMB like a car. The modern one is a bit more bland and plastic than the old character-filled one. But it’s also a better unit.
I have been lurking for a couple years, and posting for about 6 months. I am still all wide-eyed and bushy tailed about this place! I get so excited reading the Great Debates and Pit threads, and I eagerly scan the threads looking for my favorite posters.
I have had my mind changed on at least two topics that I was dead certain about, and that is downright exhilerating for a 33 year old woman!
I find moments of magic on this board, too. Ogre, you just brought an emotional response out of me with your dragonfly thread less than an hour ago! That is why I opened this thread…I recognized a name that had brought me some joy. So I hope that this feeling your are feeling about the board doesn’t cause you to stop posting.
Too late for the edit window, I noticed that Why Not already pointed out your brilliance concerning the dragonfly story.
An incredibly successful board if the sheer volume of participants is anything to go by. I joined it before assessing it properly but never go there.
I’m completely mystified by its success. Even the supposedly serious Debate/Discussion forum is moderated by a bunch of ignorant, trollish jerks.
SA must be doing something right. Can you explain or suggest what that could be?
When I first joined SDMB, I was amazed, thrilled and sometimes startled by the wide range of opinions and the richness of the subject matter. Over time, I’ve become much less impressed. That’s only natural – familiarity breeds replaces the original wonder. Over time I’ve learned the personalities and posting patterns of a lot of fellow dopers. My own posts have sort of changed over time, and I’d like to think some of that has been me wising up to the sophistication and intolerance for bullshit on this board. I’ve learned to look for **tomndebb’s ** posts any time religion is discussed (especially the Roman Catholic church) and I’ve come to deeply respect his learned opinions. Similarly, I enjoy **cosmosdan’s ** posts; he’s a complex person, and his posts reflect that. Conversely, while **Der Trihs’ ** posts are pithy and often stingingly satiric, they also tend to hit the same extremist note over and over and over again; he doesn’t seem to be a man open to new information, but that doesn’t make his posts any less interesting.
The other departments have their own personalities and characters, too, and I sort of miss some who have stopped posting (when was the last time we heard from MouseMaven?)
No, SDMB hasn’t jumped the shark, and I doubt it ever will. It probably has reached the point where new subscriptions will be slower in coming because of the saturation factor. But new blood comes in all the time. The board just isn’t the major time-waster to me that it once was (for one thing, I don’t have the time to waste any more). I suspect that becomes true for most of us over time.
I wish I was used to wit an intelligence. As it is, I’m starving.
I also get a kick out positive responses like, “the board is just fine, I look for _____’s posts and they are a delight.” Where ______ is either a deranged imbecile, an obvious charlatan, or some pseudo-intellectual wearing Harris Tweed while puffing on a bubble pipe. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions…. But some of those opinions suck.
The board is just fine. I look for **Waverly’**s posts and they are a delight.
Wise ass
Not this time, but I’ll be keeping my eye on you
Would you like to hear from someone who’s part of the problem?
Here’s the thing: I read the SDMB most days and post a little more than once a day. When I started, almost all the forums outside of Great Debates were (you know what? I actually mean “seems to me now to have been,” but I believe it’s true) a smorgasbord of widely varied and often offbeat topics, most of which were originally of personal or at most local interest. But it seemed as if a lot of people went out of their way to bring to the SDMB things that would be, for lack of a better word, fun to talk about, not widely known, capable of a wide variety of interpretation, and not an easily-predictable succession of headline-plus-claim, counterclaim, dismissive remark, insult, rinse and repeat, circling round and round 'til it finally goes down the drain.
I used to try to stay out of the more contentious threads. I never was much for starting threads. My goal was to post once in a thread with such a cleverly humorous, unexpected and well-executed couple of paragraphs that I would entertain everyone and offend nobody.
Didn’t work for too long. The opportunities I saw didn’t come up as often as my craving for attention demanded. So carefully thought-out and composed posts gave way, more and more often, to seizing the first opportunity to be funny, and I cared less and less if being funny entailed being mean. Or even cruel.
This coincided with a general coarsening of the SDMB in general, with more and more threads devoted to exploring not the world at large, but some individual members’ deeply-cloaked personal bigotry under the (probably correct) assumption that the internet is the best place to advertise such aberrations: the opprobrium will fade, but not before a couple of appreciative fish have found their way into the net.
In short, this used to be a place I (mostly) came to be funny, and now it’s a place where (mostly) I shout at the shapes of things I hate, and I know it ain’t only the SDMB that’s different now. Which is a shame: the SDMB and I have both changed each other – for the worse.
I’m a newbie compared to many here, and I’ve read some truly amazing posts and I’ve learned to really respect and admire some of the members and mods here.
There have been a few posters however, who make me hesitant at times to share my opinion.
I’ve found myself responding to a point made in someone’s OP enthusiastically - then I remember the board nitpickers and editors and decide that defending my use of a certain word or phrase isn’t how I would wish to spend my time, so I delete my enthusiastic entry and move on.
I’ve been told I don’t belong in the pit since I once objected to being called names because of my opinion. I understand that it’s cool there to curse and act ugly, but I didn’t know that it was a requirement.
I like it here most of the time, although my response to a thread will generally shut it down. (sigh)
If there are blatent errors in grammar or spelling, please send me a message so that I’ll actually learn something instead of trying to score one on the newbie.
Nostalgia is not as wistful as it once was.
Mangetout, I think I know what you’re talking about. It isn’t the same board as it was seven years ago. I’m not willing to call it better or worse, but it is different. It could simply be that there are any number of electric posters who stopped posting here. There are any number that have taken their place, but they’re not exactly the same, of course. I think of my relationship with this board as like a marriage; the newness and hotness has worn well off, but I’m comfortable and mostly satisfied with this place.
My biggest complaints would be the taboo subjects that we truly can’t discuss here, and the prevalance of herd mentality. For a group of people that pride themselves on their big brains, I still see a lot of people willing to go along with the majority. There’s Position A, and there’s Position Anti-A, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of middle ground.
I think I’ve figured out why the board used to feel like it moved faster than it does now:
People posted a lot of incorrect stuff in the past.
I’m working my way through Stephen King’s Bachman Books (I’ve finished The Long Walk and Rage) and wanted to see what discussion there was about the two. I found a bunch of older threads to sort through and in the middle of a good one about The Long Walk there are over a dozen posts that appeared over the course of an hour in the middle of the night where various people try to sort out which novellas appeared in which collections in response to the question “What were the four Bachman Books?”.
On today’s SDMB, one person would go to Wikipedia and copy and paste the correct answer. Then the thread would continue as normal (as opposed to sinking from a lack of replies over the next hour) because the same thing is happening in all of the other threads. Who knows if that makes today or the past “better.”
And for the record, I think Rage is one of the dumbest books I’ve ever read in my whole life.