I started lurking here about 2005. I think the biggest change is it is not the wild west it used to be with people getting attacked constantly. Some of the biggest offenders seem to be gone. I have no idea if they left voluntarily or were shown the door. Insults still happen, though sometimes people are more clever about about being derogatory in an unprovoked fashion. It cracks me up when the instigator gets a smack back and then complains about it. And, of course, there are still people who are over the top about it and downright disruptive. Just fewer than in "the good old days". And, unsurprisingly, many don't see themselves the way others do. Not much different than real life off the net.
I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly so I could be way off base on this, but it seems that there are more people posting these days who are really new to shooting. When I started posting here I was new to precision long range shooting -- but had won money and trophies as a competitive trap shooter and been a shooter in general since the early 1970s. Now it seems there are many who are buying their first guns -- of any type. In the mid-2000s I seem to remember more experienced shooters here. Now more questions than answers. If this is part of his point, I think Graham may be right that there are more people spouting off based on things they've read than things they've done. Then again, the rose we remember and the thorns we forget, so maybe I'm off base on this one.
I don't think I ever participated in the political arguments so I shouldn't be in a position to say I miss them. But given the state of things these days I think I probably would have started posting in threads like that if they were still around. Frank, I've been here long enough to know you don't like anyone telling you how to run your site, but there's a car forum I've posted on that wanted to eliminate political posts due to people complaining they didn't like coming across those threads and getting upset. But there were so many people that still wanted them the site ended up making a pay-to-play subsection where it was more anything goes. But you had to pay a fee to get access to "The Clubhouse". So it was hard to take complaints seriously when people had gone out of their way to pay money to read stuff that pissed them off. Just a thought that might put more coin in your pocket and shut up the disgruntled. If you're not interested, no big deal. I'm not complaining, just throwing out an idea I saw implemented elsewhere.
As far as the programming changes to the site I don't have any complaints. In fact, I've been rather baffled as to what the fuss was about. My Yahoo email has made more annoying changes that have required more effort on my part to adapt to. It's the internet; it evolves. Adapt or fall behind.
And not long ago a commercial poster said anyone with more than a thousand posts (excluding ownership and employees) should be deemed an incompetent -- so shouldn't some folks be happy they lost part of their post count?
