So nice to be noticed. 
But seriously, it’s because the community is large enough to be self-policing, and the benefits of remaining are outweighed by the relatively small cost of helping to do the policing.
Some of the same forces mean the board skews liberal from a US perspective, and there are diverging views about whether that’s a good thing.
I don’t think that is cause for much debate; most longer-term members in good standing respect and appreciate the efforts of the mods. I sure do!
And yes, good, self-policed community norms around clear wording, jargon avoidance, etc. matter.
I do feel like the traffic has been decreasing - threads that I was used to seeing multiple posts within an hour or two may get a post in the morning and one or two in the evening. I hear that “messageboards are old school and on the way out” so I guess I assume we are seeing this. But it does feel like there are ways we could encourage more traffic. Not looking to hijack this thread but it is something I think about, and I know other Dopers who do, too.
Basically, if the poster is inarticulate or cannot support his or her opinion, they are brought up short by those who can. It tends to frustrate those who post ignorant comments, and the moderators take care of those who cross the line into nastyness.
OTOH, posters are very patient with those who don’t know about something. Instead of just a “you’re stupid,” they will be given an explanation, usually by several people. No one is put down for asking simple questions.
because if you aren’t, we’ll set you adrift buddy!
IMHO is the forum where all the intellectuals hang out. Those other forums are for the wack-a-doodles.
When someone wanders in and posts something that isn’t really of Straight Dope Quality™, the responses you’ll see will not be the same expressions of hostility you’d see elsewhere:
• There will be a distinction made between attacking someone for their behavior here and attacking them for their opinions or beliefs or other statements. In other venues, people who don’t like your opinions may voice their objection as an objection to your behavior.
•If someone makes a claim that is not generally held to be self-evidently true, people in here won’t tend to say “you’re wrong and you’re stupid for thinking so”; they’ll instead say “prove it, cite please?” or “you’re wrong, here are 13 links to evidence supporting the alternative or the opposite”. That lets a discussion proceed.
• If someone has come in and made assertions and posted their beliefs and made factual claims that were piled on heavily with dissenting assertions and contrary claims and whatnot, that same person can post on a different subject and people here will tend to reply without the well being poisoned by their disagreement with them in the other thread. In other words, for the most part the contents of any given subset of your posts are not treated like a litmus test for determining that “you are bad and we want nothing to do with you”. You may get your head bitten off in Great Debates and told that your logic is ridiculous, and get your ass handed to you in General Questions for making claims that others consider dubious and unfounded, but the same people may agree with what you say about the relative merits of Cheap Trick or the best way to handle nosy neighbors or something.
• Reciprocally, people who do attack and make everything a personal likeability contest will pretty quickly find themselves ridiculed and taunted and perhaps pitted directly in the BBQ Pit. We don’t suffer fools gladly around here. You’re entitled to your opinion but we don’t have to agree with it; you aren’t entitled to attack people personally for daring to disagree with you.
Active forums tend to develop a distinct culture early on. This culture is self-reinforcing, even if veteran posters do not consciously enforce it. New members who join because they actually want to participate learn the unwritten rules in order to be taken seriously. Those who don’t tend to be sidelined or ignored until they leave. Once a culture is established, it’s very difficult to change.
There are many influences on the initial direction of a forum culture, but the strongest are probably the purpose of the forum, the character of the early adopters, and the structure of the forum itself. For example, a gaming forum’s culture might be biased one way if the game is highly competitive and PvP focused, and a different way if the the game is focused on cooperative play. The competitive game is more likely to develop a culture of interpersonal and factional conflict than the coop game, but this can be headed off by displays of good sportsmanship early on. Strong moderation and emphasizing “help” and “guide” subforums in the structure may also blunt moves toward a strife-driven culture.
The Straight Dope boards managed–mostly by accident, I think–to hit a winning combination of these factors early on. The basic focus was on helping people, specifically by answering questions, which attracted early posters with a combination of curiosity, knowledge, humor, and an inclination to be helpful. They valued erudition and high-quality writing, rewarding these traits by preferentially responding to posts that displayed them. That set the pattern, helped along by moderation and the evolutionary approach to subforums. (I think that the BBQ Pit, in particular, was an inspired move.) Inertia has mostly kept us on that trajectory since.
The others are stating it in a more polite way than is strictly true.
Non-SDMB material posters can end up as the center of an intellectual shark frenzy. It’s not pretty and rather goes against the (popular) concept that we’re all accepting and loving and so on. Personally, I don’t view myself as an accepting and loving sort, so it doesn’t bother me when it occurs, but it is a bit surprising to see.
I can’t think of any recent examples, but maybe search for the phrase “wall of text” and you’ll probably find some OPs who got laid into.
I’ve been on these boards a bit over a year now, and as a rookie, I got slapped around a bit at first, but nothing I couldn’t handle. It was rather like the mother lion you see swatting her cub when he transgresses. She means business and gives me a sharp swat, but her claws aren’t out when she does it.
I like this place for its breadth of topics, its generally well thought out and defended opinions, and the fact that most of these people genuinely care for one another. If I have an opinion on subject, but am not 100% convinced it’s the right one, I can bring it here and toss it out for comment. What results are answers that either reinforce what I thought coming in or cause me to rethink my original position. Sure I can do hours of research on the topic, but unless I need that in-depth knowledge, I can get a quick and responsive answer here. Love that.
Well, no.
Liquor stores and bars are the only places two Methodists can meet and not recognize each other.
(Spoilered so as not to spoil your spoiler.)
I always thought that Methodists were Baptists who wore shoes.
One other trait that seems to be prevalent is thanking people for corrections. Most of us are more interested in learning than in getting upset that someone said we were wrong. So a correction, especially one with links to additional information, is appreciated.
The sharks were fairly polite to the guy who had his own, personal explanation of how the pyramids were built. All things considered. It’s the folks who get angry or whiney when no one agrees with them who end up savaged.
I’m feeling that way too. Back say 10 years ago I was active/semi-active on about five boards; now this is the only one left. Not just the only one I am active on – all the others folded their tents and can only be accessed through the WayBack Machine. What caused message boards to fail could be its own thread; in fact I think it has been. But that we’re still alive at all bodes well for us having at least some future.
Remember the whole AOL community boards and chats system and how active it was? Back in those days I rarely passed through that version of the Dope but I was active in the two Civil War rooms and was even a “Hostie” for a while. Lord knows AOL advertised and pushed the whole thing. And we in it pushed and found people to stop and try it. But still it died a rather ungainly death. Which is a long way of saying I think we’re better off maybe (just maybe) letting the course continue for us here rather than trying things to bulk it back up again to the “Golden Era” — whenever that was.
I think you mean to say “Thanking people for corrections seems to be another prevalent trait.” 
It’s somewhat misleading.
Many of the discussions in GD are well trodden ground, and many of the posters who participate in these discussions have read a lot on these subjects. Much of what they write is just repetition of talking points they’ve seen in other sources. There is a significant drop-off in quality of thought when you try to get many people to think for themselves.
This.
Also the Prime Directive of “don’t be a jerk” which the moderators do a good job of enforcing without getting heavy-handed about it. If a new poster comes in and violates the norms, not just by being stupid or juvenile, but by being an asshole, he doesn’t last long.
And we are very good at sucking up to Management. 
Okay, so I am not alone. Not sure what can be done, but yeah, messageboards are a mature communication form.
Not inherently, really. In fact, in my experience, the quality and maturity of a message board directly correlates to its association. In this case, the Straight Dope is directly associated with a newspaper column of the same name, and the characteristics of said newspaper column are at least to some degree carried over to the board.
In the case of a very large and active game-related forum like, say, MMO-Champion, the board essentially attracts the loudest and angriest whiners about the games in question with a smattering of actually productive posting. Needless to say, the posting quality on the board in question is on average exceedingly low.
Okay, all you smart doods, the plural of forum is fora, not forums; well, at least in the Roman town square sense of things. Okay, never mind.