Just a nitpick, but Jackie is a her, and a beauty to boot.
I met the president and founder of meetup and he said 75% of people who signup don’t ever go on a meetup. And he said the largest number of groups were for moms.
I’ve been here since 2003. But my post count is low; I read far more than I post. One of the reasons for that, which may be something that deters newbies, is that whatever insight I might offer has usually been added. I’ll read something in Great Debates or IMHO or P&E, think of a response, then discover that, say, iiandyiiii or Kimstu has already made the point. And usually much more fluently that I would have.
TL;DR: SDMB can be intellectually intimidating.
Fart jokes, though. I can do fart jokes. And crappy puns.
this site leans left like the Pope leans Catholic
And also–I’m guessing–not a fan of tedium?
Has there been an uptick in A) new member registrations, and B) activity as a whole, on the SDMB since the whole isolation/social distance/quarantine thing kicked off?
Tripler
“Quality” of posts is too subjective. That’ll come later (once everyone dries out).
For every genuine newbie who bumps an old thread because they have something to say or something useful to contribute to the thread, there’s probably 10 spammers who re-opened that thread just to drop some crap in it. When mods find these spammers they remove the posts and close the thread. That’s really more of an issue than newbies chiming in and of course gives the impression that we don’t like new users when that’s not the case at all.
Jenny
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
The fact that it leans left at all, while not automatically banishing those of other viewpoints, makes it a refreshing (and rare) change from those message boards that remain on the internet. I wonder how many right wing boards would remain if they tried to be as liberal(if I may) as we were when it comes to welcoming those that disagree with us.
I often get directed to this site when I have a question.
I disagree!
Welcome!
even more than leaning left, I believe over 60% here are atheists. I know because I once asked. That’s way,way above the number in the US or most first world countries. BTW I’m Buddhist and we have no God.
Yes, I remember seeing that. That’s even more unusual, I suspect, than the SDMB’s leftist orientation; especially for a board that’s not specifically about religion.
That may be because of the way atheists are treated on other message boards.
thank you!
and, QFT
I don’t mean to single you out, and I’m just using your post as one of many examples of criticisms being made here that I disagree with.
I would say that the single most predominant characteristic of this board is that it tends to operate at a higher average intellectual level than most others, and has a higher than usual proportion of posters who are educated professionals and are knowledgeable and insightful. Leaning liberal is not some intrinsic nature of the board or its founders; it is, in my view, merely a consequence of being aware of evidence-based truths, which in the broader American context is unfortunately perceived as being “liberal”. I doubt that many of our European posters would consider this board to be particularly “liberal” – especially when I think to back to some of the fierce arguments I’ve had about things like free speech absolutism, gun control, or abortion rights. As a somewhat left-leaning Canadian, I hardly dare venture into any of those topics again, especially the first two, because I’ve been piled on by both conservatives and so-called “liberals” on this board over those issues.
I think conservatives have been treated fairly on this board by the moderation staff. If some have been banned, it’s because they objectively deserved it by repeatedly breaking the rules through such tactics as repeated thread-shittting. It may well be that some have left of their own accord because they felt outnumbered and perhaps sometimes unfairly pitted. But I don’t know what the board as a matter of policy is supposed to do about that. Everyone is allowed to express their opinion, and if more posters hold opinion “A” than opinion “B”, then that’s the way it is. The only thing that matters is that everyone is judged fairly.
To be very clear, the last thing I would want to see is this board becoming a liberal enclave, a sort of branch of the Democratic Party the way Fox News is the PR agency for the Republican Party. All I want is for it to be fact-based, evidence-based, intelligent, and fair, and I think it is.
The same comments apply to atheism. I don’t know that this is a board full of atheists, but if it is, they’re certainly not proselytizing atheists. We allow, not only free religious discussions, but explicitly the posting of “witnessing” in GD, which mostly seems to mean virtually any nonsensical drivel that anyone wants to post, which seems include everything from supernatural drivel to accounts of hearing radio transmissions from God through the fillings in their teeth. Virtually nothing is out of bounds. But again, being a fact-oriented board premised on rational thinking, some of this silliness gets pitted. I even admit to having contributed to such pitting, but only because of the sheer silliness of the posts in question – and I don’t even consider myself an atheist; I’m not that committed. I’m mainly an agnostic who doesn’t obsess about the subject very much.
Really, I think the loss of membership here is mainly due to the prevalence of alternative social media – the kind that teens obsess over on their phones – which I find through casual observation to be far inferior to the depth that a message board like this can provide, and which social media I don’t participate in.
Bijou Drains, where do you get your claim that “over 60% here are atheists”? I did a search of your name and places where the word “atheist” appears in the thread, and I didn’t find any thread that could serve as a source for that claim. I found a thread that you started in which you claim to remember an earlier thread started by someone in which a poll was taken that showed that that statistic was correct, but no link was given to that thread.
In any case, I suspect that a thread which is a poll wouldn’t be a very accurate measure of what percentage of Straight Dopers are atheists. Most SDMB members simply would ignore the poll. It may be true that atheists would be more likely to respond to the poll. I think there’s a good reason why atheists are more likely to comment about their beliefs than theists on the SDMB. Where else does an atheist have to talk about their beliefs? Theists have places to do so, but where does an atheist go?
This brings up another point that I’d like to make. What is the SDMB good at? I think that it’s good at answering questions of fact. It’s where someone who can’t find the answer to such a question can go to when all their efforts to answer it have failed. Someone here might be able to answer that question. And, of course, it’s a place where people who like to search for and find the answer to difficult factual questions can do so.
I don’t think the SDMB is that good at answering deep philosophical/religious/political/etc. questions, most of which have been debated for millenia. We often can discuss the historical background to those questions and explain the boundaries of what can be known. We are not that good at answering the essential questions though.
I think the SDMB is O.K. but not great at discussing matters of what are the great examples of various artistic matters. Much of our discussions consist of just giving lots of examples of what we consider the best works within each artistic field. Often though our discussions will turn into an argument about a single artistic item which doesn’t get us anywhere useful.
Well, nobody is good at that. At least not in definitive, conclusive ways. That’s why there are so many religions and philosophical movements. Human beings are well-equipped to discuss these things but not to come to indisputable conclusions.
I am here and post a lot, so the SDMB is, by definition, very popular. So there!
I actually encourage it on my site. Why?
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One of the advantages of a traditional message board over Reddit and Facebook is that threads aren’t as ephemeral. If you have something to add to an old thread on Reddit, the thread stays buried, and few will see what you wrote. On a message board, post to an old thrrad, and it’s bumped. Your contribution is treated the same way as those of earlier posters.
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Just like it’s better to have fewer busier subforums than a lot of slow subs, I think it’s better to have fewer but more active threads, than a lot of threads with only a few posts.
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Google hasn’t been kind to message boards in recent years. Stale forum threads rank low in search engine page results (SERPs), especially if there’s no links to them from the outside world. Active forum threads rank a bit higher, because it’s the equivalent of a Web page with regular updates.