Forum Moderation

[joeqsmith]

Sure, I can and do ignore most of the threads.  That's not a problem.  I'm just surprised by the amount of non-technical traffic allowed and seemingly promoted.

Nothing here is not "promoted" (apart from pinned threads). Threads live or die (very quickly) by participation.
The moderators job is to stop the wheels from falling off the billy cart, not to construct a billy cart so safe that it can't possibly hurt or offend anyone.

When I mention seemingly promoted, I am referring to off-topic threads that violate your own rules,  that you or the mods join in. 

To be clear, I personally am not offended by comments about politics, religion, sexual preference, what you identify as....  I just don't care.  It's not why I am here. 

EDIT: A somewhat quick glance at it.  Seems to show that there was disagreement between members, as to who wanted some off-topic posts, in it, or not, and concerns over its moderation.

How ironic.
The literal thing Joeqsmith wants (heavier moderation of off-topic posts) caused the exodus of some of the biggest users in the biggest thread on the forum.

If you are asking what I would want, it would be a level playing field.  You own the site and have your appointed members to help control it.  That bias will always be present.  For now, unlike BD139, I don't consider it enough of a problem and choose to continue to use it.   While I appreciate having such a forum available,  I don't mind discussing how it it operated.  After all, that effects my use of the forum.   I've also mentioned many times that if my posting upsets you too much, feel free to pull the plug.  No hard feelings on my part. 

[EEVblog]

If you are asking what I would want, it would be a level playing field.  You own the site and have your appointed members to help control it.  That bias will always be present.  For now, unlike BD139, I don't consider it enough of a problem and choose to continue to use it.   While I appreciate having such a forum available,  I don't mind discussing how it it operated.  After all, that effects my use of the forum.   I've also mentioned many times that if my posting upsets you too much, feel free to pull the plug.  No hard feelings on my part.

No hard feelings at all, just tryign to explain why we do things. I know not everyone is going to agree.

FYI, IIRC DB139 left because of over-moderation of off-topic posts in the TEA thread. He was one of the main contributors and I guess felt that it was their own little space where they could wander off into all manor of unrelated off-topic subjects.
The problem was that there was so much daily traffic in that one thread that if you went in the check what was going on you'd likely see on-topic post and easily miss all the off-topic stuff that might be several pages behind and then someoen kick started it back onto topic again suddenly. It was more like a chat room than a regular thread.

[tggzzz]

On the other hand, bashing hams is OK, ---because?

I can't speak for BD139 but having dealt with enough of them over the past few years, they certainly have earned a special place.

He can speak for himself E.g
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/cb-and-ham-radio-techs-love-their-bird-wattmeters/msg5656363/#msg5656363
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/how-alive-is-ham-these-days/msg3078764/#msg3078764
... but you are aware of that

[krish2487]

If you are asking what I would want, it would be a level playing field.  You own the site and have your appointed members to help control it.  That bias will always be present.  For now, unlike BD139, I don't consider it enough of a problem and choose to continue to use it.   While I appreciate having such a forum available,  I don't mind discussing how it it operated.  After all, that effects my use of the forum.   I've also mentioned many times that if my posting upsets you too much, feel free to pull the plug.  No hard feelings on my part.

No hard feelings at all, just tryign to explain why we do things. I know not everyone is going to agree.

FYI, IIRC DB139 left because of over-moderation of off-topic posts in the TEA thread. He was one of the main contributors and I guess felt that it was their own little space where they could wander off into all manor of unrelated off-topic subjects.
The problem was that there was so much daily traffic in that one thread that if you went in the check what was going on you'd likely see on-topic post and easily miss all the off-topic stuff that might be several pages behind and then someoen kick started it back onto topic again suddenly. It was more like a chat room than a regular thread.

Wow... I was just going through the other thread...21 pages!!!!  and I never realised that this was going on ...
Also made me realise and appreciate the tightrope walk that the mods do..
damned if you... damned if you dont...

and really a thankless job..
Kudos to the mods team for handling it professionally...

[Zero999]

Compared to 5 years ago we have now is endless tolerated troll threads and sick and disgusting behaviour by a lot of your forum members.

If you don't fix it, everyone leaves and you're left footing the bill with a corpus of assholes in an echo chamber.

When I say assholes, this is interchangeable with fascists in this particular thread.

I see "Be excellent to each other" as the tagline of the forum. I do not see people behaving that way.

That isn't true. The forum has always had threads like that. You appear to have amnesia.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/brexit-what-it-means-for-small-manufacturers/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/covid-19-virus/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/science-must-be-abolished-according-to-uct-students-as-it-is-racist/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/ee-reverse-engineers-ahmed_s-clock/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-is-hillary-clinton-above-the-law/

[tszaboo]

You agree with BD139's original post where he called this forum a "cesspit of fucking morons" and "corpus of assholes in an echo chamber. When I say assholes, this is interchangeable with fascists"?

By many accounts here it seems, it's BD139 that should have been banned for that, right? 

Sounds like someone who is very salty with how the world is politically going, and someone who forgot to take their medication.
Mental breakdowns all around. I expect this to only get worse. It's not a moderation problem, really.

[tggzzz]

Compared to 5 years ago we have now is endless tolerated troll threads and sick and disgusting behaviour by a lot of your forum members.

If you don't fix it, everyone leaves and you're left footing the bill with a corpus of assholes in an echo chamber.

When I say assholes, this is interchangeable with fascists in this particular thread.

I see "Be excellent to each other" as the tagline of the forum. I do not see people behaving that way.

That isn't true. The forum has always had threads like that. You appear to have amnesia.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/brexit-what-it-means-for-small-manufacturers/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/covid-19-virus/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/science-must-be-abolished-according-to-uct-students-as-it-is-racist/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/ee-reverse-engineers-ahmed_s-clock/
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/why-is-hillary-clinton-above-the-law/

You are missing the point.

Yes, the forum has always had wingnut and extremist threads - but they used to be sufficiently infrequent and self-contained that they could easily be ignored. That's no longer true; they are more frequent and difficult to ignore. Starting about a year ago I have chosen to do something I find unpleasant: use the ineffective "ignore member" and "ignore thread" mechanism. That's an indication of deteriorata.

The frequent use of TLAs, phrases and concepts that are directly derived from political agenda doesn't help. Yes, they are not overtly political, but neither were phrases like "national comrade" and "living room". I've recently been introduced to a concept popularized by an anecdote shared by Michael B. Tager on Twitter in July 2020. The concept is beginning to feel apt, something I deeply regret [1]. For the avoidance of doubt, despite the admiration for Musk's actions I don't think that specific noun used is relevant. But the definition following "(Internet slang) A space in which..." really should give pause for thought.

[1] For a little background and discussion, see https://web.archive.org/web/20221221103518/https://god.dailydot.com/bartender-kicks-out-tweets/

[magic]

When I joined there was an active and completely official thread about identity politics in engineering, the usual suspect derailed random threads to praise CCP every few days, and somebody would bring up Trump, migrant crisis or whatever maybe once per week or two.

If anything, Dave hid some of those things and generally cracked down on politics in early 2020s and there is less of that talk today and it gets shut down faster. I suppose that something about the drama generating potential of the virus scare and the mostly peaceful military operation, plus growing possibilities of IRL fallout if things get out of hand may have convinced him to tighten the grip. (That's also the time when TiN left - sure it's a bummer, but apparently he failed to get it into his head that Dave may also be unhappy about this forum becoming a battleground and that good times are coming to an end.)

Funny that you mention neonazis, because there used to be one regularly posting on this forum for a few months and it apparently bothered precisely no one, until he got banned for generally being an abrasive prick. I bet you have no idea who those people are and what they look like; most of the time "bashing the fash" just means whining about people unwilling to sacrifice everything for your hippieoptimistic vision of the future. I'm sure I'm a fascist by this standard, but it's your problem, not mine.

[joeqsmith]

If you are asking what I would want, it would be a level playing field.  You own the site and have your appointed members to help control it.  That bias will always be present.  For now, unlike BD139, I don't consider it enough of a problem and choose to continue to use it.   While I appreciate having such a forum available,  I don't mind discussing how it it operated.  After all, that effects my use of the forum.   I've also mentioned many times that if my posting upsets you too much, feel free to pull the plug.  No hard feelings on my part.

No hard feelings at all, just tryign to explain why we do things. I know not everyone is going to agree.

FYI, IIRC DB139 left because of over-moderation of off-topic posts in the TEA thread. He was one of the main contributors and I guess felt that it was their own little space where they could wander off into all manor of unrelated off-topic subjects.
The problem was that there was so much daily traffic in that one thread that if you went in the check what was going on you'd likely see on-topic post and easily miss all the off-topic stuff that might be several pages behind and then someoen kick started it back onto topic again suddenly. It was more like a chat room than a regular thread.

I doubt I posted in the TEA thread more than a handful of times, if at all.  It never caught my interest.  I wouldn't have a problem with them treating it as their own little space to discuss off topic stuff.  Because it was a single thread, it was easy to ignore. 

I'm not sure why BD139 left outside of what they posted here.  I would actually be more interested in the root cause of technically contributing members being banned.  Searching their history,  they often appear to get caught up in one of these off-topic weaponized mod discussions.  I suspect they post something that was bad enough for them to be permanently banned, and their post removed.  Rare I see anything happen to the people who start these threads.   

If you create a thread similar TEA where anything goes, no one would be banned from posting their opinion,  mods would not intervene unless there was illegal activity,  I would support it.   Some may get upset over that cesspool of garbage and leave.  Others like myself would not have any interest and ignore it.   The benefit at least for me, it would be localized.  It would be up to you to enforced it's use.  A fine line indeed.
 
Again,  it's your site, you make the rules, you enforce them, you allow what ever bias you like.  I choose to utilize it or not.  Simple.  Had you not recently been running a pole asking for feedback, I doubt I would have responded here.  The pole is ridged and I would think you would get more value from discussing it. 

[joeqsmith]

On the other hand, bashing hams is OK, ---because?

I can't speak for BD139 but having dealt with enough of them over the past few years, they certainly have earned a special place.

He can speak for himself E.g
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/cb-and-ham-radio-techs-love-their-bird-wattmeters/msg5656363/#msg5656363
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/how-alive-is-ham-these-days/msg3078764/#msg3078764
... but you are aware of that

I am, and their enjoyment of a good floozy.     Reminds me of Bender and his floosies, hence the previous Bender reference. 
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/nanovna-custom-software/msg5046019/#msg5046019

[tggzzz]

If you are asking what I would want, it would be a level playing field.  You own the site and have your appointed members to help control it.  That bias will always be present.  For now, unlike BD139, I don't consider it enough of a problem and choose to continue to use it.   While I appreciate having such a forum available,  I don't mind discussing how it it operated.  After all, that effects my use of the forum.   I've also mentioned many times that if my posting upsets you too much, feel free to pull the plug.  No hard feelings on my part.

No hard feelings at all, just tryign to explain why we do things. I know not everyone is going to agree.

FYI, IIRC DB139 left because of over-moderation of off-topic posts in the TEA thread. He was one of the main contributors and I guess felt that it was their own little space where they could wander off into all manor of unrelated off-topic subjects.
The problem was that there was so much daily traffic in that one thread that if you went in the check what was going on you'd likely see on-topic post and easily miss all the off-topic stuff that might be several pages behind and then someoen kick started it back onto topic again suddenly. It was more like a chat room than a regular thread.

I doubt I posted in the TEA thread more than a handful of times, if at all.  It never caught my interest.  I wouldn't have a problem with them treating it as their own little space to discuss off topic stuff.  Because it was a single thread, it was easy to ignore. 

I'm not sure why BD139 left outside of what they posted here.  I would actually be more interested in the root cause of technically contributing members being banned.  Searching their history,  they often appear to get caught up in one of these off-topic weaponized mod discussions.  I suspect they post something that was bad enough for them to be permanently banned, and their post removed.  Rare I see anything happen to the people who start these threads.   

Agreed about TEA being a single thread, but the spark was provided by some TEA denizens that objected to posts by another TEA denizen. I sat on the fence, being mildly irritated but not caring and by simply skipping over the relevant posts. Certainly the TEA thread is less interesting now.

I don't remember technically contributing members being banned per se. There seems to be three aspects of the forum's operation that cause them to choose to leave:

• moderation being used as a weapon
• perceived inconsistent moderation
• strong dislike of the tenor that is creeping into the forum from outside the forum

Any individual member is powerless against those, so statements to the effect that "the forum is what YOU make it" are both unhelpful and unrealistic.

Observation: it is very difficult for new management to fly in (or over) and change a company's culture and ethos. That's one reason why HP took extreme care over who they hired, to make sure they would instinctively fit in with the HP Way. Bill and Dave consciously created a winning formula, and actively took steps to preserve and promulgate it.

Observation: companies rot from within.

If you create a thread similar TEA where anything goes, no one would be banned from posting their opinion,  mods would not intervene unless there was illegal activity,  I would support it.   Some may get upset over that cesspool of garbage and leave.  Others like myself would not have any interest and ignore it.   The benefit at least for me, it would be localized.  It would be up to you to enforced it's use.  A fine line indeed.

That's the usenet alt.* hierarchy technique. Helpful, but not a solution. "Ignore subthreads" was still needed, even in groups including high quality frequent contributors such as Win Hill (TAoE) and others.

Again,  it's your site, you make the rules, you enforce them, you allow what ever bias you like.  I choose to utilize it or not.  Simple.  Had you not recently been running a pole asking for feedback, I doubt I would have responded here.  The pole is ridged and I would think you would get more value from discussing it.

"pole is ridged"? Autokorrupt in action?

[tggzzz]

On the other hand, bashing hams is OK, ---because?

I can't speak for BD139 but having dealt with enough of them over the past few years, they certainly have earned a special place.

He can speak for himself E.g
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/cb-and-ham-radio-techs-love-their-bird-wattmeters/msg5656363/#msg5656363
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/how-alive-is-ham-these-days/msg3078764/#msg3078764
... but you are aware of that

I am, and their enjoyment of a good floozy.     Reminds me of Bender and his floosies, hence the previous Bender reference. 
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/nanovna-custom-software/msg5046019/#msg5046019

Floozies plural in bd's case; he's very open about that, and we offer the appropriate support No, I am not going to elucidate!

[joeqsmith]

"pole is ridged"? Autokorrupt in action?

rigid

I didn't/don't follow the TEA thread.   I visited groups.io when it was first moved but never checked after it was moved again.  I personally would rather ignore a single thread.  TEA was never a problem for me because of this. 

I don't get too concerned with people coming and going on their own accord.  It's the complete ban of technical contributor's accounts that interests me. 

[nctnico]

"pole is ridged"? Autokorrupt in action?

rigid

I didn't/don't follow the TEA thread.   I visited groups.io when it was first moved but never checked after it was moved again.  I personally would rather ignore a single thread.  TEA was never a problem for me because of this. 

I don't get too concerned with people coming and going on their own accord.  It's the complete ban of technical contributor's accounts that interests me.

I recall that over the years a tiny number of technical contributors have actually been banned. Some got baited into circular discussions (by others weaponizing moderation as tggzzz puts it) and some didn't stop pushing their political views. AFAIK others just left.

[AVGresponding]

What happened in the Tea thread, did buying get too intense or something?

Something, something, something, a moderator deleted a post, all hell broke loose, something, something, something, were offered their own section and moderator but they declined, then a handful of regular people left and started their own TEA forum which only lasted a few months, some returned I think, and I think they are now on Discord.

Not "something something something", but some members weaponised the report button, as has been discussed. The initial moderator response was clumsy, and antagonised a number of members (including myself) rather than defusing the situation. Several posts were deleted, resulting in further antagonism. By the time the offer of a separate section was made, a number of major contributors had already left, and it was left to the few people such as myself with feet in both camps to try and negotiate, unfortunately to no avail.

teanonymous is still going strong; some threads there are invisible to non-members, so activity may appear less than actual. There is pretty much zero requirement for moderation of the rules (which are the same as the groups.io one, which is abandoned in favour of the Forumotion one), because such discussions happen (quite frequently) on the Discord channel instead, and often get very heated, resulting in people going off to calm down for a few days.

An important distinction you have missed is that there is no off-topic in the TEA thread there, because all topics are allowed (barring the aforementioned contentious ones), including the non-electronics but nevertheless interesting stuff that contributed to the TEApocalypse.

[jpanhalt]

... some didn't stop pushing their political views. AFAIK others just left.

Politics are deadly for technical/non-political blogs.  Leaving quietly is the most effective part.  Look at Electro-tech online (ETO).  It's barely a shadow of its former self.  Its owners and some mods don't seem to have learned.

You can't avoid politics entirely.  Things like supply chain shortages, tariffs, etc. do affect technical activities.  It's things like blaming the current President for banning all discussion that is not on Truth Social  that cross the line.  Keep names and policies out of it, and focus on solutions to the problem.  Rather than bashing someone for shortages, describe what you have done to deal with them.

[Siwastaja]

If you see a thread drifting off-topic in way you don't like, YOU have the power to pull it back on topic by, surprise, posting on-topic replies.

This, this and f***ing this. One of my pet peeves here are people who start complaining when technical threads "drift off-topic" even when they really do not, just that they fail to realize this isn't Stack Exchange (Q&A site). Then they only add noise by complaints in an attempt to silence others. After that, either they succeed and thread just dies (never gets back to their desired "original" flow), or they just get ignored and the discussion goes on (that's better).

Threads drifting here and there while still touching the original subject is exactly the strength of this forum. They only drift because everything has been said already. If not - then instead of complaining, add what is missing - and that will again act as trigger for others to reply to your post and thus you can direct the flow of the entire discussion! This is the beauty of humans socializing.

Unnecessary complaining and "OP is not interested about this" type of replies (how do you know that!? and even if you do, why does it matter? this is a community, OP is not a dictator of the thread) just ruin the mood and make everyone write in a more defensive style.

[Siwastaja]

Several people have noted that it feels like there are fewer high quality posts

And many others have not noted it. For example, to me the quality of posts seems as high as ever before. Possibly even higher!

Specifically, these "several people" who complain about quality, like bd139, themselves do not produce high-quality content at all. I don't understand why bd139 is some kind of cult character to some, I probably missed some subforum completely, maybe some social bubble, but going through his recent posts the only longer posts are political rants and personal attacks; technical content is simple one-liners. Before the recent posts, I remember him from earlier complaining and an earlier ragequit, then comeback (hopefully I'm not mixing him up with someone else, if so, apologies!)

At the same time, we are seeing great technical discussion with a lot of insight from people like Nominal Animal, SiliconWizard, brucehoult and many many others and that has not gone anywhere. And people like peter-h are great "discussion starters" or "drivers"; they ask the right questions in a way which pokes people to share their insight.

Discussions involving analog electronics, power electronics etc. have not changed much for worse or better. The same mentally and technically very stable people seem to be discussing them, just like 10 years ago; I don't even need to mention their names. In programming and MCU related stuff, I can see that the Q&A site nature, specifically "how to download IDE and make a led blinker", has changed to much better with wider and deeper programming mindset (for example, Nominal Animal's posts). EMC/grounding related discussions have suffered as T3sl4co1ls contributions slowly deteriorated (IMHO) but thankfully he was not the only one discussing those; and I can see that enough new people have learned something to keep the discussions still going in a similar direction. We don't absolutely need T3sl4co1l to tell us anymore that MLCCs lose capacitance under DC bias, ferrite beads saturate, and split ground planes and USB shield magic components are usually colossally bad ideas. I mean, people like wraper, ataradov etc. can tell you all that. Or me. But I do miss the verbosity and going-deep-but-not-too-deep into theoretical math style of T3sl4co1l. Losing that part is a shame.

Or think about Someone who is always ready to correct, usually with actual data sources (something most people don't bother doing), misconceptions related to renewable energy, HVAC etc., pointing out where the logical fallacies are without ever resorting to personal attacks.

All in all, in my opinion the quality of discussions here is still excellent. It always has been, it still is. Maybe it's 25% better for some, and 25% worse for some other, depending on your personal weigh factors and biases. But any variation during these years is small. I don't buy the claims of having to leave the forum because of supposedly collapsed quality, that's utter BS. It's an excuse, possibly unconscious, possibly conscious. As I said before, people lose interest, come and go, and that's normal. The phenomena of ragequitting with heavy personal attacks against nearly everyone, and the lighter version of complaining "this isn't as good as it was before, bye", are older than the Internet, and there rarely is much truth in those arguments.

[tggzzz]

"pole is ridged"? Autokorrupt in action?

rigid

I didn't/don't follow the TEA thread.   I visited groups.io when it was first moved but never checked after it was moved again.  I personally would rather ignore a single thread.  TEA was never a problem for me because of this. 

I don't get too concerned with people coming and going on their own accord.  It's the complete ban of technical contributor's accounts that interests me.

I recall that over the years a tiny number of technical contributors have actually been banned. Some got baited into circular discussions (by others weaponizing moderation as tggzzz puts it) and some didn't stop pushing their political views. AFAIK others just left.

The ones that push their political views - either overtly or via code words associated with politics - usually won't be a loss.

The ones that are cancelled as a consequence of weaponised moderation might deserve sympathy, although they are arguably partially responsible for their own downfall.

The ones that chose not to contribute are the saddest cases.

[tggzzz]

What happened in the Tea thread, did buying get too intense or something?

Something, something, something, a moderator deleted a post, all hell broke loose, something, something, something, were offered their own section and moderator but they declined, then a handful of regular people left and started their own TEA forum which only lasted a few months, some returned I think, and I think they are now on Discord.

Not "something something something", but some members weaponised the report button, as has been discussed. The initial moderator response was clumsy, and antagonised a number of members (including myself) rather than defusing the situation. Several posts were deleted, resulting in further antagonism. By the time the offer of a separate section was made, a number of major contributors had already left, and it was left to the few people such as myself with feet in both camps to try and negotiate, unfortunately to no avail.

teanonymous is still going strong; some threads there are invisible to non-members, so activity may appear less than actual. There is pretty much zero requirement for moderation of the rules (which are the same as the groups.io one, which is abandoned in favour of the Forumotion one), because such discussions happen (quite frequently) on the Discord channel instead, and often get very heated, resulting in people going off to calm down for a few days.

An important distinction you have missed is that there is no off-topic in the TEA thread there, because all topics are allowed (barring the aforementioned contentious ones), including the non-electronics but nevertheless interesting stuff that contributed to the TEApocalypse.

Being a small community "of blokes in a pub/restaurant", there has been no need for moderation - but that wouldn't scale. Just as companies have to change significantly above, say, 10 and 150 employees, so do other social groups.

I must get back to the discord group; it sounds ... entertaining. Maybe having a clear partition is beneficial.

[Siwastaja]

The ones that are cancelled as a consequence of weaponised moderation might deserve sympathy

I have felt that way a few times. What bullshit from my side, really. I would go back and chill a bit instead. If I had a time machine with extra feature of modifying behavior of others, I would do nothing. Especially I would not go back to want any sympathy.

Maybe there was some weaponized moderation going on. Maybe I was being "cancelled". Like, I wasn't totally hallucinating. But I was still overthinking and overreacting to it, wasting my mental resources for no reason. It's not like the whole world turned against me. Maybe just a few individuals. And those would forget the whole thing after a day. They were and are not interested about me.

I think in worst case(s) something like this bothered me for a week or two, and I posted less / not at all during that time.

although they are arguably partially responsible for their own downfall.

Most definitely. I'm happy I have been able to bounce back. My fault. Very simple corrective action: get over it, forgive yourself and others, and start posting decent contributions again.

EDIT: I'm specifically not talking about the TEA thread; I never really read it. Maybe there was some heavier-duty weaponized moderation going on there, I don't know.

[tggzzz]

Specifically, these "several people" who complain about quality, like bd139, themselves do not produce high-quality content at all. I don't understand why bd139 is some kind of cult character to some, I probably missed some subforum completely, maybe some social bubble, but going through his recent posts the only longer posts are political rants and personal attacks; technical content is simple one-liners. Before the recent posts, I remember him from earlier complaining and an earlier ragequit, then comeback (hopefully I'm not mixing him up with someone else, if so, apologies!)

BD has produced useful content that has been appreciated by many members. For obvious reasons he hasn't contributed much recently.

BD did previously decide this place was too low quality for him, but it looks like he returned to see if it has improved. Clearly he was "disappointed". To me that's another example of the general principal that "going back to something that you left is almost always a bad idea; you rediscover why you left it in the first place".

The idea that BD is a "cult figure" is laughable If you had met BD, as some of us have, you would know he dislikes cults and fanbois. Hell, you don't even have to have met him, you just have to have read what he has posted; he has said as much earlier today!

BD's prominence in this thread is only because he is the OP, and because he has very forcibly made points that strike some chords with other members.

[ebastler]

The idea that BD is a "cult figure" is laughable

He certainly holds the distinction of having created the most posts per day here, whatever that's worth.
Somehow I can't see him holding his breath for long...

[tggzzz]

The idea that BD is a "cult figure" is laughable

He certainly holds the distinction of having created the most posts per day here, whatever that's worth.
Somehow I can't see him holding his breath for long...

About the first he has written "Fuckers have found me out. Shit! Goes to hide the kool-aid bottles".

About the second he has written "I've made it impossible for me to recover my account again now"

You can supply your own interpretation

[joeqsmith]

...
Specifically, these "several people" who complain about quality, like bd139, themselves do not produce high-quality content at all.  I don't understand why bd139 is some kind of cult character to some, I probably missed some subforum completely, maybe some social bubble, but going through his recent posts the only longer posts are political rants and personal attacks; technical content is simple one-liners.
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    If you're jealous of their status, I suggest setting your goal a little higher.   Nothing against BD139.  I enjoy their colorful comments.  Cult leader, maybe Dave.  After all, it is his site we are using and he certainly has a large following. 

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I don't buy the claims of having to leave the forum because of supposedly collapsed quality, that's utter BS. It's an excuse, possibly unconscious, possibly conscious. As I said before, people lose interest, come and go, and that's normal. The phenomena of ragequitting with heavy personal attacks against nearly everyone, and the lighter version of complaining "this isn't as good as it was before, bye", are older than the Internet, and there rarely is much truth in those arguments.

Lower signal to noise = loss of interest.  In this case, leaving would be a choice.    My having to leave would be the result of a permanent ban, or maybe some other outside circumstance.