I think the Internet is less friendly than 10 years ago, it is just me?

[etmoviesb]

Maybe I am a bitter sad person, but lately I have the feeling that the Internet is less and less friendly. So I was wondering what do you think.

Of course nowadays there are many more communities and more places where to chat and discuss. But most of the places are moderated in draconian rules that make little no sense.


Everything opinion based it is frowned upon, too bad this applies to like 90% of normal life. Sure, if you work in engineering, math, computer science, or "hard science" fields it might be slightly lower; but still even in math we can discuss of what is the easiest or "better" of two correct proofs.

Here is a similar statement based on stackoverflow.


Luckily there are communities like this one that keep it the way it should be.. :) Friendly, informative, and also speaking about opinions.

[Jack]

I only post here and at a blues guitar forum - both of which are made up almost entirely of adults.  I used to post at forums with a lot of young people on them but good grief, I had half the forum on my ignore list and eventually decided I had much better things to do with my time.

[Trevor]

I agree: aside from this website, I barely post anywhere else.

I found out what a horrible place FaceBook can be earlier this year when our useless national cricket team lost yet again and I expressed myself: only to be screamed at by people I thought were friends. 

That never happens here: there is a real sense of family and tolerance for differing opinions here, even for peeps who walked out of Avengers: Age Of Ultron. 

[dean]

Middle finger emoji

 

[Trevor]

Middle finger emoji

 

 

You posted that pic of Jar Jar Bonks giving the finger to all on FB and that made me LOL.

[Trevor]

both of which are made up almost entirely of adults. 

 

I don't know these 'adults' of whom you speak. 

[Newt]

Agreed: voicing an opinion makes you a nasty, evil person!  Everybody's pov is equal too - even if 90% do not know what they are talking about.   

The 'net has become quite boring.  The few forums I still frequent are lacking in activity/discussion.  This is the only one that remains fairly active.

[ulthar]

The "Internet" has NEVER been a "friendly place."  Go back into the time machine and check out some of the old Usenet flame wars or log onto privately run BBS's back in the day.  Some of the old IRC chats got so hot it could melt the Cat 5 coming from the wall.

And, it was just as bad in science and computer fields.  Go on just about any modern programming forum and fire up a thread called "C is better than Java" and pop some popcorn...and it's tame now compared to 15 years ago or more.  Or check out some of the late 90's / early 2000's Slashdot threads on Windows vs Linux.  Fun times.  Fun times.

Anonymity of the medium has ALWAYS brought out a "boldness" of debating styles you'd never see in face to face conversations.  Forum admins and bloggers have ALWAYS had issues with the "Moderation Question."  How much is too much, how little is too little?

Sure, everyone has always had the bright idea "My site will be different...I'll allow a free flow of ideas and it will be great."  Then, some butt-head comes in and takes a crap all over that and boom...first ban.  Then it's, "How do I prevent that from happening again? I know!  I'll post some RULES!"

It's an endless tug-of-war.  But, there will always be anti-social / asocial jerks that bring down the signal to noise ratio and get bolder and bolder with insults and flame bait statements.

It's just a blind guess, but I'd estimate that there really is only about 1-5% of the interactive sites on the 'Net that are worth anything at all...and they generally have a very strong sense of 'community' due to a shared commonality.  Sites like this one, for example.  Too many sites try to be too many things for too many people in the quest to be "popular" or to increase "page views" and the like...so even if they start out tight and focused, end up a mess.

The opposite of the 'community' sites are the ones that seem to serve no other purpose than to give low-class blowhards a place to vent and spew vomit all the while hiding behind "I have a right to voice my opinion, too!"

[Ed, Ego and Superego]

My biggest problem with the intenets is dealing with all the half-wits.... Its nothing to do with having opinions, its being a jacka$$ when you don't have to be. Flaming ain't cool.
-Ed

[JaseSF]

There are way too many people who expect everyone to have the same opinion on everything. Truthfully different people should have different opinions on most everything and expressing an opinion about entertainment (be it movies, tv, wrestling, sports, video games) is always an opinion, not fact.

But yeah there have always been idiots out to wreck something good...I had to leave many other message boards in the past because they became overrun with childish banality or people become openly hostile if everyone didn't agree with their opinions...

[etmoviesb]

The "Internet" has NEVER been a "friendly place."  Go back into the time machine and check out some of the old Usenet flame wars or log onto privately run BBS's back in the day.  Some of the old IRC chats got so hot it could melt the Cat 5 coming from the wall.

And, it was just as bad in science and computer fields.  Go on just about any modern programming forum and fire up a thread called "C is better than Java" and pop some popcorn...and it's tame now compared to 15 years ago or more.  Or check out some of the late 90's / early 2000's Slashdot threads on Windows vs Linux.  Fun times.  Fun times.

That's tame, exactly.
At the time, moderators were much more passive. Nowadays you get stopped for making questions! Forget for the discussions going out of the drain...

Example for me, I tried android stack overflow; the question was something like:
``I need an app for my running sessions. I have a bluetooth heart rate monitor and I would like to have an app that allows to select rate ranges different depending on the time; for example: 145-155 for the first 20 minutes, 150-157 for the next 5; and finally 140-150 for other 15. Do you know any app of this kind?""

Less of one day passes and I get one well-meaning, but out of topic answer. I simply tell the author why it does not apply.
Other few hours and moderator chips in blocking that it is not a good question because "out of topic" and question like that become obsolete (what doesn't anyway?!?) with even a note like: "it is not always clear what is out-of-topic or not" and "it seems part of the question are fine, try to rephrase it..."...
What the hell? What is unclear? I need an app, for android with 2 features. Of course, what was the problem is never explained.

What I know, I still do not have an app that does what I need, but I understand why the android stackoverflow community is so small. f**k them.

Another example for archlinux community that describe itself like this: "The Arch community is very dependable, lively and welcoming: all Archers are encouraged to participate and contribute to the distribution, [...]"

Truth, I update the pacman page with (I think) useful commands (from the pacman page history):
07:51, 29 March 2010‎ Ezzetabi (Talk | contribs)‎ . . (14,867 bytes) (+517)‎ . . (Added few other useful tricks.)

Less than one day later:
03:56, 30 March 2010‎ Gen2ly (Talk | contribs)‎ . . (14,350 bytes) (-517)‎ . . (Undoing changes for now. Generally, I only like the pacman maintainers to edit this page. Protecting. File a bug if you like to see these changes go through.)
Notice the tone "I only like" there is no explanation of what I did wrong or why... "lively"... sure. "welcoming" and "all Archers are encouraged to participate" not really.

[ulthar]

I find the signal to noise ratio on stackoverflow to be abysmal.  Between the off-topic answers and sniping over "but my solution is good, why the negative?" garbage, what you are describing just brings it down further.

In short, they think far too much of themselves.  That's my opinion, anyway.   

I have found some useful stuff there from time to time, but the vetting necessary gives me a headache.  It's gotten to where I cringe when I do a search for a programming bit and stackoverflow hits are returned.  Ditto bugzilla hits and everything in that genre.

What you are describing with those two examples exemplify the whole bit I call "bug reporting culture."  It's the 'forum police' attitude.  It's some of the most unhelpful tripe imaginable...more yammering about why something is or is not a "bug" all in the name of "we are so PRECISE here...you can't just waltz in and tell us our software doesn't work."  They take stuff so...personally.

When not in the middle of a pressing problem to be solved, it's kinda funny....in a badmovie lover kind of way.  I mean, why not?  Unhelpful, snooty techno-geeks that are about 1/10th as smart as they think they are arguing over whether some UI failure is a bug or not (or better yet, if a seg fault is a bug) is the PLAN 9 of the programming world.

Best of luck with it...there's no answer, I'm afraid.  But, it really has always been this way, in my opinion.

[etmoviesb]

In short, they think far too much of themselves.  That's my opinion, anyway.   

Big egos are one grave problem nowadays. It is made even worse by the "all opinions are equal" nonsense... Really, it become that science and nonsense should be on the same level! :|

As scientist I really feel this pain... sometime I really want to ask: "do you believe that planes fly or cars move? I guess you do. So why exactly you believe this and you don't believe XYZ".

Just put in XYZ any of the topic where it seems to be a lack of consensus that actually is not there.

[Newt]

I am in awe of the simple beauty of the Dunning-Kruger Effect.  http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Dunning-Kruger_effect

It irks me no end in operation, but there is some solace to be found in knowing it is "a thing" and that others recognise it.

[El Misfit]

My sociology teacher told us that people on the internet can be rude/offensive/etc because they hide behind a screen. They become very narcissistic because of it; so there's that.