Pay-to-post was the big one (OTOH, that’s how Thudlow_Bonk, other posters and I got the coveted Charter Member title), but another one was the Winter of Our Missed Content, when the Board went down for something like an entire month. I don’t think we got everyone back after that, either.
‘Don’t be a jerk’ has morphed into, “Be like us - or else.”
This is a ‘safe space’ for the monoculture. For everyone else, it’s a minefield. Tread darefully, or suffer hateful attacks.
Part of it may be the omnibus thread I started on TV series. I still see some series getting their own threads, however.
Well, if it’s twenty years later, like this one is for me, I’ll be dead. That’s a sobering thought.
I always enjoyed getting together to gossip the day after American Idol. It was the main reason to watch!
Republicans are still here. Speaking as one, the hate and vitriol that any right-leaning opinions get has shut me down from commenting on them at all.
This board, as stated above, has become a great deal less fun, and a great deal more left leaning, with no room for dissent. Its what made me not comment on any threads except TV or gaming, and computer issues.
I’ve loved the straight dope since AOL days. I still miss Opal. I miss Master Wang-Ka. And Tubadiva.
I’ve stayed on the board because of the depth of knowledge here. But its made me go silent on almost all my opinions.
We had a “predict when SDMB will end” thread several years ago — I think when we switched to Discourse (though it’s impending potential demise wasn’t so much about that, more about the general trends).
I was way off. I gave it six months (IIRC). Nice to see I was wrong (diminished though things may be).
I’m truly sorry about that. Let’s hope that, once a certain former president is well and truly in all our rear-view mirrors, the Zeitgeist will return to a place where your opinions are not so readily (unfairly, but understandably) linked (in others’ minds) to the inherently reprehensible.
I’ll be a lone dissenting voice and say that in some ways it is better now. The old Dope was hella sexist, rape jokes were the height of wit and posters who had a problem with that were bullied mercilessly.
A beloved moderator here was openly acknowledged to have a blind spot when it came to moderating posts by and about women, you know half the planet.
one angle might be (look in the rearview mirror):
the republican party of yore, was way more acceptable (by “intersubjective” standards) compared to what they represent today - and hence was more accepted then.
You could be a decent, normal person and vote GOP … but honestly voting today GOP - you really need a strong stomach to be able to justify what is going on there and if they really try to do the best for the usa
(I am not american, so I have no real skin in this game … and guess what: other countries have very similar bi-partisan problems, just replace the party name)
For almost a quarter century, I’ve posted drunk, I’ve posted in ignorant hauteur, I’ve posted in self-pity, and I’ve posted with an utter disregard for “reading the room.” (And I’ve even posted with conflicting usage of the Boston comma).
But throughout my sins, I never forgot that there was a human being on the other side. My ultimate hope was to gain their goodwill, or at least to convey my own. Why would I waste so much effort, flawed as it may be, on people I disdain? I’ve always remembered Jawaharlal Nehru, in mortal conflict with the British Empire but grateful to what he’d learned in its best schools: “no matter what, the other fellow has a point of view.”
Since (yes) Trump, I’ve seen an acceleration here and elsewhere, both online and IRL, where we don’t know each other; don’t want to, and are mad at each other not for who we are, but for whatever it is we supposedly represent to each other. Things have gotten dire, given January 6, 2020 (without amelioration if you weren’t around in 1968 for comparison), and in such times principals are valued more important than people. This is a shame in a poster, and a disaster in a moderator.
Thank you for that, Slithy, and welcome back.
I do miss the story tellers we used to have. The humor is much less, but I think that’s true of the world. Or maybe that’s just me because I’m not the same person I was back then.
I agree that the board probably feels a bit unfriendly towards any republicans left here, but I’d also argue that the republican party is acting in ways I’ve never seen before and it is very difficult to understand.
Not just ‘Republicans’, but anyone who isn’t part of the board’s prevailing culture. Hating Trump won’t help - trust me.
To be mercilessly attacked here, all you have to do is deviate from the crowd on any number of issues. There are a number of posters here who appear to have made it their mission to ‘deplatform’ the undesirables - those being anyone who says things they disagree with politically.
The biggest change is the loss of so many experts in GQ. There used to be a lot of teachers and college Professors here.
The shrinking set of active posters is alarming. A lot of Bulletin Boards are disappearing on the Web. Hopefully the SDMB will continue for a few more years.
It would be great to see young adult members join and replace the original founders.
Looking at the bottom of the About Page, we’ve been gaining 3-ish people per day. I don’t know if this includes spambots and the like, though.
Our Active User count seems to be hovering between one and two thousand, so that seems marginally healthy, depending on how “Active User” is defined 
that type of thread turned into a running "series your watching or have given up on " in CS :
https://boards.straightdope.com/t/series-youve-recently-watched-are-now-watching-or-have-given-up-on/
Sure but when shows were aired an episode at a time, usually a week apart, we could jointly discuss and dissect the episodes. That doesn’t happen in the “series you’re watching” thread.
I think the problem there is simply the fragmentation of engertainment. There are very few shows now that have the kind of ‘water cooler appeal’ shows like American Idol or Lost had back in the pre-streaming era.
I disagree. (But then I’m one of them.)
It’s not that the majority of the people on this board are blindly attacking people who disagree with the majority. It’s that the majority of the people on this board will argue on the side of reality. So when people come here and assert things like vaccination causes autism, eating meat causes cancer, black people have a crime gene, the holocaust didn’t happen, the moon landing was faked, the CIA killed Kennedy, or Trump is a great man, they’re going to have reality thrown in their face. And the people saying those things can’t handle that. They want a safe space where their delusions will be accepted by like-minded believers.