Is Fluther loosing it's greatness and turning into just another Q & A site?

Nah, it’s charm is still there. As long as we are frequented by the grumpy old bastards of the site (you know who you are), we’re cool if a newcomer wants to come on in and ask a question or two – no matter how insubstantial they may seem.

C’mon, man. Don’t be elitist; if you want better questions and quality discussions (there were numerous today – Palin, for example), ask them. Live and let live.

And I’ve been awake for far too long. G’night.

well, i too miss the old days when not every question was total bullshit, and sometimes it feels…unfair..for instance, i ask a question because i’m more interested on reading up on a subject, i get one response which isn’t that helpfull, yet a question like “do you take a dump when you wake up ?” gets a hundred responses, what’s the deal with that ?

Hopefully the regulars on the site will keep comming around and grace us with their opinions! As long as that happens, you can just scroll Down to a question that suits you!

Since I have been back i have not found any threads that I really wanted to jump into. I have logged on almost every day for the past two weeks and I’m just not feelin it. I am hopeful that something will hook me as it once did not so long ago.

yes, sadly

To me, Fluther has always been just a Q ‘n A site. I still visit regularly. After more than two years… 0.o

I’ve always felt Fluther has been a bit loose, myself.

There, does that make you feel like the old days?

Perhaps, before ranting, you might want to check out a grammar and spelling book.

Well, I’ve only just joined up, and I’ve been on other Q&A sites before, but I have to say that I keep an eye on things here and rarely find anything particularly worthwhile to answer.

I was unaware it was ever anything but a Q&A site.

I think Fluther will always be great! I lurve Fluther!!!

No. These things come and go, always have always will.
You get an influx of new members and they cause Fluther to evolve each time. Go with the flow.

Where can I find that paper at? I gotta big one brewin’, you know, with it being morning and all.

Nah. It really depends on if you think it was great or not in the first place.

I tend to think it was great, and still is pretty good.

Still better than askville and yahoo answers combined.

Fluther has been regressing to the mean for the past year and a half. It’s the curse of every successful site.

When they start out, they’re small and friendly, and it’s very easy to keep things high-content and high-value, because everyone values the same thing. As they expand, though, you’re going to get people who do not have the same values—consider what happened here when we got an influx of wis.dm users, or what happens when we get users who think this is a good site to use to shill their pet idea or their pet product. As time goes on, and the user pool of the site becomes larger, the average user and the average post gets closer to the average user and the average post on the Internet as a whole—and as any web browsing will tell you, those averages are depressingly low indeed.

@cwilbur Aw crap. WE NEED TO GET THE HARVARD GRADUATES IN HERE PRONTO!

@Saturated Brain: They’re here (except that they’re from that school in Providence). They get yelled at for pointing out that there is a reason for the difference between it’s (it is) and its (possession; as in “loosing its greatness.”) They get yelled at for defining a sentence. They get yelled at for wanting lucid answers that needn’t be read four times to garner the meaning. They get yelled at for expecting one to understand that punctuation has a point other than abstract art.

Check out the discussions about Palin’s recent announcement.
http://www.fluther.com/disc/49014/is-it-possible-that-sarah-palin-really-will-make-a-run/

http://www.fluther.com/disc/49001/what-do-you-think-of-sarah-palins-resignation-as-governor-of/

It’s summer and school is out. That always brings an influx of new users.
@cwilbur Most of the wis.dm people are gone so this can’t be pinned on them.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic: He was not pinning anything on them specifically, only using them as an example. With the influx of wis.dm members came a new tone and quite a bit of conflict, anyone who joined the site in the same time frame saw this as the community and it’s culture. Your arrival did change the site, and had a lasting impact on it’s members by affecting how new members and old approached it in the future.

@asmonet Is there any lingering resentment?

@The_Compassionate_Heretic: Not that I’ve seen, or been a part of. Directed at a few users and their choices, perhaps. But not at the group as a whole.

Quality comes and gos in waves. This too shall pass.

@asmonet & @Marina have said it best. It’s just ebb and flow. We’re in the valley right now. Don’t worry too much. We’ll be riding the creat soon enough.

@gailcalled . . .He saavat huusi puhunut kaunis kieli.

It’s irritating in its own right.

edit: crest

Don’t worry, I won’t be around forever. And then the geniuses and interesting people can get back to playing on the internet. huh?wait…

@tinyfaery . . .please don’t go. you are one of my favorite jellies to butt heads with. :(

@blondesjon Guess that makes us both old goats. :)

Yes it does. I found it captured here. I’m the one on the left that is right. :)

Fluther is fluid… we are jellyfish after all! As others have said, the quality and nature of the questions does ebb and flow as new members join, stay or move on. I would like to take this opportunity to ask for everyone’s kindness to and patience with new members who may not be familiar with the site’s culture. We were all new once upon a time. :)

Also, remember you can always use the ‘My Fluther’ feature to follow just those members you mesh well with, if you like.

so we give them the guidelines link, “kindness and patience” and ignore them?

ummm..ya..ok

I don’t think you Flutherites understood the question
the last part of the question “Can we do something now to save Fluther and restore it to it’s previous glory” means: is there a way to show/teach what a good *decent question is, then they can go from there??? I don’t know like a page that comes up when opening your account that explains what Fluther is and the features, examples of questions, something like that (no I don’t mean the Guidelines page) or a “how to video” on different toppics
so ya that’s what I was looking for in this question cuz I suck at teaching people and I don’t have any idea if this is possible or not…

@tyrantxseries We can’t force the actions of others. What we can do is conduct ourselves in a way that we would want others to conduct themselves.
Setting a good example as it were. If there’s a question that isn’t one that appeals, we can just skip it.

Stick it out. It will change again. Going back isn’t an option.

@tyrantxseries . . .Who should determine what a decent question is and isn’t?

if only we had some type of moderation on here…

@The_Compassionate_Heretic no your right we can’t “Force” but we can help guide them and maybe they want the help.. or we can skip it..and that does nothing to aid their enjoyment of the site, or the quality of the site.

@Blondesjon oh, I don’t know…oh ya the collective, the mods, the owners, I don’t think it would be too hard to determine what you thing a decent question is.

@tyrantxseries Then all we can do is flag questions that aren’t appropriate.
The problem is that there isn’t always a moderator present.

@The_Compassionate_Heretic um… Thank you for your impute you have been VERY helpful..

I like the idea of a page that pops up when you join… it could pretty much be the guidelines page, with maybe a few tweaks to be more of a ‘welcome’ page. Even then, though, the trouble is that most people probably won’t read the thing. Lets be honest here, how often do we read the Terms of Service or Agreement when we join a website or download a piece of software?

Often times people join, ask not such a great question, and learn just by being here a while. Either they assimilate, or they decide this isn’t the place for them. It’s kind of self-regulating. However, if we offend them right off the bat, they won’t stick around and get that chance.

@tyrantxseries: Well, it’s still incorrect to write “restore it to it’s previous glory” . It’s still “its,” if you are looking for the glory days. Clarity matters. “It’s” still means “it is.”
And “your” is not the same as “you’re.”

@tyrantxseries We’re pushing a feature soon that makes the question-asking process a much more guided one, yes.

“Guided”??!

I’d rather have it loose than paternalistic.

Just boycott the questions that you don’t like. There are still plenty of good questions out here.