One thing that shocks me, and maybe I should post some examples of this, is how the standard of political correctness has changed on the forum over time.
Atlas has been around 2003, and some members here have been since around that time. I like to go back and read a lot of old posts on the forum from 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago and to be honest, I'm floored at how politically incorrect and offensive (by today's standards) people on Atlas used to be compared to today's standards, even by some users who are still around today.
I wonder, if I found a post from circa 2012 by a user who is still here today, and the post is offensive by today's moderation standards, would the user get modded? It's interesting to think about. 
I mean, many of those users left because of moderating. They were doing things like encouraging some poor loser to overshare all the details of his life to mock him. I'd say we're better off without that.
To be clear, I'm not saying that Atlas being more strictly moderated a bad thing - I only joined this forum about a year ago, so I have no idea what it was like before that, let alone many years ago, so I am withholding judgement. I have no issues with the rules being enforced and the moderators doing their job if it is necessary, I'm just saying that when you go back and look at old posts, it's a bit shocking because of the difference in the level of political correctness. Just an observation, not a judgement.
Fair enough. Yeah I think in general things have changed a lot. In the late 90s, early 2000s there was a particular type of tech savvy elections dork that made up the primary demographic of this site. They weren't caring a lot about their own language.
The atlas (leip's website) started in the early 90s while Leip was an MIT student. He formed the domain uselectionatlas.org in 1997 iirc and the old precursor forum (which may be archived, I'm not sure) was created in 2001, i think.
