It’s a lesson in how quickly good intentions (rational discussion and questioning authority) can lead to the evaporative cooling effect and the adoption of extreme sociological/political views while pretending that this is not taking place.
Which time period do you have in mind, here? Because “quickly” seems inaccurate. LW is old, and the decline has taken a long time.
If anything, the interesting thing with LW’s decline is how slow it was, and how much attention the site continues to receive despite the lack of content. There was no major crisis that split things apart; it just got more and more stale, mostly as people graduated to more impressive and important things without replacements growing up here in the same way.
I somewhat agree. Sometimes communities dissolve through a publicized schism. Other times they just decay without any visible drama. It’s not realistic to expect every single person who gets fed up and leaves to post a detailed criticism of the site and why they are leaving. A lot of people would rather just leave quietly and not waste their time with that kind of thing.
Still, it seems like the decline definitely accelerated over the past couple of years.
Which time period do you have in mind, here? Because “quickly” seems inaccurate. LW is old, and the decline has taken a long time.
If anything, the interesting thing with LW’s decline is how slow it was, and how much attention the site continues to receive despite the lack of content. There was no major crisis that split things apart; it just got more and more stale, mostly as people graduated to more impressive and important things without replacements growing up here in the same way.
I somewhat agree. Sometimes communities dissolve through a publicized schism. Other times they just decay without any visible drama. It’s not realistic to expect every single person who gets fed up and leaves to post a detailed criticism of the site and why they are leaving. A lot of people would rather just leave quietly and not waste their time with that kind of thing.
Still, it seems like the decline definitely accelerated over the past couple of years.