As I see it, the problem comes down to a two-sided coin:
1) Community. There IS a bond that has arisen from the nonsense/fun/support/nonessential subforums here. I can honestly say that, sight unseen, there are a passel o' people who post on this site whom I would back up unreservedly, with fists, weapons, money or reputation, sight unseen, if the people needed help. I've made some real-life friends from here. (*edit* Darn auto-clicking the Post button instead of Save.) Anyway, as much as I enjoy Jim's work (and I do!), a straight-up book club wouldn't hold much interest for me except around the time of book release, and I LIKE the people around here, so I like hanging out with them and doing the dumb junk that friends do.
2) Human bloody-mindedness. Some people are born jerks. Some have jerkhood thrust upon them. When someone who takes great pride in being a jerk (often in the guise of I'm Just Being Honest) comes in and starts stirring up the pot for their own twisted entertainment, the aforementioned community knee-jerks into DANGER! ALERT! INCOMING JACKHOLE! active defense. I've done it before, almost certainly too often. While I'm not necessarily sorry I did it, I do apologize for it, because
that's not what this forum was intended for. But it's people like me who reflexively go after people acting like jerks who allow that bloody-mindedness to blossom; what better way to showcase one's jerkitude than against someone who thinks they're a righteous defender? We fall into the trap, again and again, and with something like
Changes getting under a lot of people's thin-skinned fingernails (please pardon the horrible mixed metaphor), the squawkers have been coming out in
droves. All of which makes for a forum that's a verbal killing ground, which has nothing to do with the board's original design intent.
And now a third side of the coin for good measure and typical WTFness:
3) Lack of filter. I'm guilty of it, as are most of the prolific posters. We tend to post what we think, rapid-fire. BAD news. A lot of what's been happening lately, far from being strife, has been people going WAY past the line of what's generally acceptable on a PG forum (Parental Guidance, not you, Paynesgrey
). We're just not stopping and thinking, "Hey, is this something that everyone on here who isn't an utterly unreasonable twit can at least tolerate, or are there potentially strong EW factors that I just haven't considered?" I've never believed a public forum should HAVE to be cleaner than what you see on prime-time network (NOT cable) TV, but we should at least try to take the high road. Which definitely incriminates my posts about cat barf.