to think that the average debating ability of Mumsnetters has dropped considerably over the past year?

[colditz]

I was browsing through some old threads earlier, and the general standard of debate has dropped. People here used to be able to follow a thread and give a pertinent response, backed up with careful research. Lately the response is likely to be completely unrelated to the original point, and passive-aggressive to boot.

I like it best when people quote Wiki like it is the be all and end all of knowledge.

Blimey, outed in less than 1 minute!

Wahwah - you don't have to eat now, you just take a tablet.

colditz - you are right. We are now a much larger group, with many more 'chatty' threads, inside jokes/conversations among friends, and far fewer truly thought provoking threads with well reasoned responses, etc. There are certainly alot more extreme threads!

Part of the change is, I think, due to the sheer volume of threads. Threads are also much faster moving, and many post in a knee-jerk response sort of way, rather than taking the time/expending the energy to give a thoughtful response....and am not sure a thoughtful response is generally appreciated anyway.

Now it is hard (if not impossible) to keep up (unless you spend hours and hours a day here), and many go for quantity vs quality of response. There is less civility in general which may be down to the fact that it is much harder to 'know' anyone now with all the name-changing, new members, and ability to opt in and out of topics/threads.

It is just a different place now - and that is both good and not so good. We will never know, but I would be curious if Justine and the others at HQ think it is better now. It must be more lucrative and certainly has a higher public profile....

I think I miss threads like the taking horses to the Olympics debate. I don't think I've laughed like that on a thread recently. Or did you just mean serious stuff

I thought I was proper clever till I lurked for a bit on the Wankers thread

[dopey emoticon]

Well I'm dyslexic so don't get at me for getting 'navel' wrong and I think that other things are more important anyway **I am lying

• *And passive-aggressive

at school we were talking about waterpolo players with a group of 15 year old girls

tillone said "I dont think water polo is fair on the horses"

arfarfa

And the sodding '*'s never work for me.

Arf with IK

Right. Well my tuppence worth...

There were some astonishingly clever posters on MN in the very old days. I mean, people whose reasoning and arguments literally took your breath away. There still are, but there are millions more posts now, so the OMG posts are fewer and further between; thus less noticable overall. (And yes, some of those posters did go mouldie, others flounced drifted away, others are still here(ahem). There was also a lot of shoite talked about pouches of douglas and whatnot. But the clever stuff stood out cos there was much more of it as a percentage.

Snigger at water polo. Just be glad they weren't worried about mints' rights

at IK's water polo tale.

not as good as the ole days threads always make me smile.a sentimental haze of nether mn,all the mn gerls,all the golly gosh jokes. i actually think it has improved less cliquey,less oi so and so come over here

Off you fuck, that's a love.

it was a good'un.
we roared in a supportively humilating way.
fab gal. so cute.

i am fascinated in the cult of shiney
am still not sure who she is

is she a fish style clique?

cheeky mare, that colditz.

lol @catinhat's trump card

Well, I haven't been here all that long but I love MN and the way threads go off at a tangent (thank you morningpaper, what a nice distraction) - don't really care what that makes me.

It's your husbands I feel sorry for. Including ABD's

"all we could think of to ask the prime minister when we got our fangs into him was "What's your favourite biscuit?""

There speaks someone who did not read the Gordon Brown webchat, only the subsequent media attention, which was clearly written by people who had already decided that they wanted a "fluffy" little piece about mothers.

scottishmummy - when you said the same thing post the you-know-what extravaganza I did agree with you, But don't you think it's heading that way again? Different groups perhaps, but definitely groups. Inevitable surely?

Although is my most hated MN foible...

IinterruptingKid, didn't you know, Shiney is you-know-who, assembling another cult of followers just like she used to. Don't tell anyone though