Maybe they hate us because we are wrong? Intellectual humility becomes us all: if everyone disagrees with us, that doesn’t mean we are wrong (I hold many unpopular beliefs), but it does suggest we should subject our beliefs to a certain scrutiny. Unless, again, you just think you are smarter than everyone else.
Really, Robert McNamara said it better than I. Just re-read his quote.
As a person who has read the Straight Dope for years in the printed form, and who has lurked quietly in the background as the all of the P2P/no-P2P drama worked itself out (not to mention server upgrades and frequent board failures) I finally decided to join up. Now that it is free, well that’s just icing on the cake. I won’t belong to any internet forum that requires me to pay for the priviledge of posting… if the PTB want to make money off their site, then that’s what these annoying banners and pop-ups are for.
Anyhow, I have some rightward leaning tendancies and I have some lefty ideals too. I’m not the brightest bulb in the drawer, nor am I the dullest knife in the outlet. If I’m seen as just another conservitroll, then so be it although I have never voted the R ticket in my life. But I haven’t consumed the Obama-brand Kool-Aid either.
Will I be a respected member of the SDMB? Only time will tell. Truthfully though, I’ll probably get banned or bored long before the results are in.
I think, Starving Artist, that if you want the left-right balance relative to the US to change here, you’d better hope that a disproportionate number of US Citizens sign up, given the place the entire US political scene sits on the global left-right scale.
I, a lefty and longtime lurker who will let more eloquent posters make my arguments for me, welcome anybody who can post intelligently. I like to hear the conservative view, even though it’s wrong.
ETA: Emphasis on intelligently. Idiot blowhards on both sides piss me off.
I came in just to say that: I think about half our posters are foreigners, and nearly all of them are going to be on the left in US terms.
That doesn’t explain why most of the free signup people are rightish.
Welcome to The Straight Dope!
Cite?
Are you including immigrants to the U.S.? Even so I wouldn’t have thought nearly that many. On the other hand, if I’d missed your posts where you’d mentioned being of British origin, I wouldn’t have known that about you either. Still I think it’s a high estimate, while agreeing that the SDMB is definitely more leftish than the US as a whole.
Ah! Thanks! You folks is much more well read than I.
“than I”? We got ourselves a goldurn English major over here!
Wow, what a wonderful lawyer you must be. The problem with your ‘clever’ Obama-esque satire is that you’ve already admitted that the original statement wasn’t satire at all, it was true.
Not that I could disagree that you shouldn’t take any special pains to make others ‘like you’ (how lame is that?!) but you might acknowledge that next time you need to call on the world’s resources to assist whatever campaign you embark upon, you might not get the response you did post-9/11. Foreign policy is long-term and, as unfortunately demonstrated over the past 8 years, fueled by diplomacy not violence. McCain won’t be enthusing national leaders with his obvious ignorance and lack of interest in other nations and that, ultimately, will have an effect on you.
It seems like I’m seeing a lot fewer tardcore posts recently. Are we in the eye of the hurricane? Have they all just been cowed into submission by the poll numbers and the obvious deficits of the McLame/Failin ticket? Or have they gone?
I just haven’t seen much from SA or Scylla or Slammin Sammy Stone in a while.
But they’re not part of the plague; they live here. It’s the newbie guests who drop by, register for free, and spout trog stuff that was particularly annoying (not that the resident conservatives aren’t quite annoying themselves, but they’re our annoying). They rather seemed to be trolling.
Right, because anyone who posts something you disagree with is “trolling.”.
No, some are serious. But most of the new guests are going to post a few times and go away. Some of these are just trying to get attention, and posting outrageously conservative remarks on a left-leaning board tends to be a way to do it.
Or at least so I gather. I don’t get trolling. I can’t understand how someone would want negative attention. I cringe when I get it. But apparently it’s how some people get their kicks.
Maybe we’re trying to [gasp] fight ignorance?
Then you’re doing it wrong.
You, sir, have cut me to the quick. Please excuse me while I cry myself to sleep. :rolleyes:
Possibly you (collective) are. I can’t judge individual motivations. But when a whole lot of people suddenly drop by, post a bunch of highly inflammatory stuff (usually with atrocious grammar, spelling, and punctuation), and then a lot of them disappear, it seems pretty likely that some of them were trolls. I am not suggesting that you yourself are a troll. You may well have found a home here, in which case we will welcome you with open arms whether you are left or right. Mind you, we’ll savage you politically from one side or the other. But we’ll nonetheless welcome you.
But you have to prove yourself (which thus far you seem to be doing in this thread). You have to present reasoned arguments with, when called for, factual backup - good cites. This should be done with decent writing skills - typos are forgiven, but consistently bad spelling, poor grammar, inattention to punctuation and capitalization devalue a poster’s opinions and in short time the poster him or herself. Unless their points are so brilliant that anything would be ignored for their sake, such people are quickly marginalized, so ragged upon that they end up leaving. I haven’t seen that brilliant a poster yet. We’re language Nazis here, and proud of it. We’re also fact Nazis, and proud of that. Meet those two qualifications, and you’re One of Us, not a troll or a fly-by. Oh, a bonus point to flaming either humorously or cleverly - we’re not very big on people just stupidly yelling about stuff, although it does happen from time to time.
So far, you seem to be doing just fine, Rand Rover.
I still think the two are related - the decrease in external trolling and the decrease in in-house nonsense appear to have gone hand in hand, and are happening about the same time as McCain’s tanking.
I think the spirit is fading. 
Maybe. Seems like, looking back, it was a more random thing, just sort of happened. Sunspots?
The most glaring symptom to my eye is echo chamber assurance. They seem to be people who have been talking with people who agree with them for so long, they have become convinced that their arguments are rock solid. They expect that lefties have not heard these arguments, or they would not be lefties.
So they post something that sounds suspiciously like Michael Medfly or Hugh Hurl with the calm confidence of a Methodist with four aces. And are astonished when their drivel is not met with resounding approval.