Content Quality, Echo Chambers, and more

[DINGO Joe]

Hi guys, not sure if this is the right board or not. Feel free to move.

I have noticed that Atlas is becoming more and more like the comments section on Facebook. Lots of partisan nonsense and promoting of party ideologies. Take for example a single poll in Alaska or Arkansas showing Trump ahead by a narrow margin, and see all the pundits posters arguing how it could happen.  Post a poll of Trump ahead in a swing state like Minnesota or Michigan and it will be quickly tossed out as "junk". Not to be offensive, but it seems like lower tier s***posting by people who lack critical thinking skills. On the Alaska poll thread, I pointed out the notable polling error the state had in 2016 and how you really should not put much faith in to one poll, and I was told that the agency that did the poll did a great job in 2014! How on earth does general election polling compare to a gubernational polling from six years ago. I mean... really? Does anyone believe that!

I looked back at those threads and I think the community as a whole grasped those polls for what they were (Arkansas highly suspect and Alaska a hard to poll state by a higher quality pollster)  Atlas has posters that scour the internet for all the polls and put it all in one place which I find very convenient.  They're pretty savvy at digging into the details and the analysis here while glib at times matches anything you'll find in the great WWW.   As for echo chamber, well that's the internet for ya.  As for content quality, I think the longer you're on here, the less interest you have in discussing something that you discussed 6 or 8 years ago (except sadly, Fuzzy), plus I'm old and little interest in changing ones opinion or having someone change mine, so I'm no help to you on that one.   GD and the 2020 (and previous iterations) have always been dumpster fires.  There's been several discussions about institutions and their myths of late (statues and founding of nation states and such) and the idea of a Golden Age of Atlas is about as true as "George Washington never told a lie"

TL-DR, suck it up and march on, or wonder off elsewhere.

[DINGO Joe]

Hi guys, not sure if this is the right board or not. Feel free to move.

 As for echo chamber, well that's the internet for ya.  As for content quality, I think the longer you're on here, the less interest you have in discussing something that you discussed 6 or 8 years ago (except sadly, Fuzzy), plus I'm old and little interest in changing ones opinion or having someone change mine, so I'm no help to you on that one.   GD and the 2020 (and previous iterations) have always been dumpster fires.  There's been several discussions about institutions and their myths of late (statues and founding of nation states and such) and the idea of a Golden Age of Atlas is about as true as "George Washington never told a lie"

While I cannot comment on posting quality, I will say that way, way back in the days of 2004-2006 Atlas was at least a lot more ideologically balanced from what I hear, possibly even marginally right of center back in those days.

"where things went wrong" is hard, if not impossible to pin point of course, not to mention the old posters from way back then also have posted that things were far from perfect at the time either.

"Where things went wrong" is when Dave Leip decided there should be a forum to go along with his cool maps.  Every now and again, someone will bump a necrothread from the before times.  Never seen one that says "Wow, that must have been the golden age of Atlas" to me, though that's not very scientific.  Conversely, even today you can see threads in the History boards that are very knowledgeable and worth reading.