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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   2471 thread views

Small-Scale Question Sunday for August 13, 2023

Do you have a dumb question that you're kind of embarrassed to ask in the main thread? Is there something you're just not sure about?

This is your opportunity to ask questions. No question too simple or too silly.

Culture war topics are accepted, and proposals for a better intro post are appreciated.

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anyone else notice that quality of online discussion has nosedived over the past year, or just me? controlling for topic and community, it seems like just the quality of debate has gone downhill so much. whether reddit, hacker news, or elsewhere, I have observed many attempts at discussion met with curt dismissals, failures to understand, misconstructions, etc. this is why I have been spending less time on forums and reddit. Is it just me? Things could not have changed that much over past year. Maybe elon and twitter has something to do with it. or worse political climate.

For Twitter and reddit specifically, the last year has seen a lot of disruption that has caused a lot of the higher-quality participants to leave. I've never been a big Twitter user so I can't really comment there, but the reddit API/3rd party app debacle cleaved off a huge proportion of the more experienced userbase. I've checked out a couple of subs I used to frequent since the purge at the end of June and the quality of discussion has taken a dive off a cliff.

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