Has this site suddenly become more nasty?

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I say this as someone who has been a member for just 18 months or so, so I am conscious there will be those who have been around for much longer. It's just that I have got a lot out of the helpful advice and simply reading posts over the last 15 months. But roughly around the time the site changed its "look", I've noticed it seems to have become dominated by some pretty self opinionated and, in a couple of cases, rather unpleasant posters.

I really miss the feeling of support and respect I used to get when I visited the site, say a few months ago. Now I just get a wearisome sense of boredom and annoyance with a few jumped up individuals and their equally out of proportion 'avatars'. Something has happened, and I can't put my finger on it, but I just wonder whether anyone else feels the same way?

No more nasty than it ever was, and I have been a member since 2008.

OK thanks - I'll defer to your length of experience. Maybe I'm just experiencing a local "dip" which in the grand scheme of things is not unusual. Still not as good as it used to be, methinks!

Not that I've observed?

I noticed this too but have only been visiting for close to a year. I was a lurker before deciding to join so I could post to get information. But maybe a year isn't enough time, in the grand scheme of things as you say.

Edit: There have been some pretty heated opinions and long, drawn-out threads lately that were pretty wearing on the mind. Hopefully those will drop off after the holidays and we'll get back to the same repetitive questions and topics. We all need a little more repetition in our lives .

I see that there can be tides of nastiness and pleasantness. I read more than post. Sometimes I feel it also depends on the thread.

I have been a member since 2010 and I disagree with Fnord. I also noticed more "nastiness" in the last year or so.

It has been very nasty. One of the best ways to avoid the worst of it is to avoid PPR. That is where the most vile of the vile seem to congregate. Specifically avoid certain topics. It's best to just keep opinions to ourselves rather than expose ourselves to those levels of vitriol. WP is amok with OCD, and where OCD people congregate and bang on each others triggers it only becomes infectious.

Maybe the season brings out more tension in people and that spills over onto the forums here, which can serve as an outlet for many.
I have been here a long time (8 years)and the level of unpleasantness tends to ebb and flow really, much the same way people have tended to come and go. Just bypass the ones you view as being less pleasant and focus your attentions on those who you find supportive would be my suggestion.

2014 has been a pretty nasty year for WP all around. I've also noticed a gradual buildup with each year. Things were very tame in 2004 when I've first joined.

I haven't noticed it getting particularly nasty lately, though I don't read a lot of the topics, so I'm dealing with small numbers of observations, which probably aren't statistically significant. To me, things seem fairly civilised, with the occasional bit of trolling or thoughtless venting, just like it's always been. Best way I know to avoid it getting to me is to try not to get sucked into polarised dialogues if it becomes clear the other person doesn't want to play nice.

Having been a member of a number of online forums, what I see is not unusual.

The truth is, people come here for many reasons--and not all the same reasons. People have different levels of tolerance for discord and "nastiness." Some people are much less sensitive to attacks, perceived and real. Some people think that disagreeing with someone means you hate them or don't support them. Some people feel that in order to support someone, they have to disagree if they feel they are wrong.

The truth is, this is a community. Communities are living, breathing things. Some aspects are great, some are not. It's part of life, unless you create a conformist community where the norm is that you must agree with everyone else at all times. There will be a$$hats wherever you go in life, but one thing I remind myself is there may be a good reason they act the way they do, so I tend to give people the benefit of a doubt, or at least try to accept people the way they are, even if it is a bit rough around the edges.

One of the aspies I have learned the most from and who has made the greatest positive impact on me regarding autism and how to raise my kids would probably best be described as a cantankerous bast*rd. Sometimes I felt like I was literally the only person in the world who liked him. Some people here might even be able to guess who I am talking about, though I don't know if he has ever posted here; he's been around, though. Anyway, when you peeled back all the external...crap...he's actually a respectable guy, and he helped me through a really painful situation. No, he wasn't all compassionate and "huggy-wuggy" but in his own way, he really went out of his way to make sure I was OK. I think a lot of his posturing has to do with self-protection (he has truly been hurt) and I think a lot of it has to do with seriously not understanding how he comes off, and a lot of it has to do with seriously being tired of trying to understand how he comes off and no one appreciating or caring anyway. And part of it is he is a cantankerous bast*rd. But he has value nonetheless. So do the posters here.

I am only responsible for what I post, and I can control what I read. On occasion, someone will post something that I find so asinine that I can hardly control myself. When I am at my best, I just stop reading that thread. When I am at my worst, I say things that probably do not make the situation any better. I know I shouldn't engage, I know it will be useless, and I do it anyway.

And sometimes, if I am being completely honest, I am not in the best place myself and it feels momentarily good to allow myself to just say what I want without thinking of the consequences. And sometimes I feel like fighting with someone, but I refuse to do it with the people IRL because fixing it takes too much work.

Once again, it is proven that brevity is not my strength, but what I am trying to say is everyone is different; people need different things; you can control what you post and what you read. You cannot control what other people write. And to be honest, a community of conformity would not be a good place for a bunch of aspies and auties, anyway. It seems to me that people on the spectrum face too much pressure to conform IRL. They shouldn't have to do it here, too.

To respond to the OP; no, I don't think it's gotten more harsh, if anything the word I'd use to describe the site right at the moment is 'boring', but it's been that way before, the board has it's own ebb and flow. A lot of it is who's active at any given time, but I think a lot more of it is what's going on, e.g. the board was maddening when the Zimmerman/Martin trial was in the news, as polarizing stories tend to create polarizing posts.