Ever since I started frequenting the Cat, back in the last millennium, there have been people lamenting how it's so much worse than it used to be, and so unfriendly and so forth.

Every now and again people have cropped up who like being a bit nasty. After a while during which there are a few fairly unpleasant threads they tend to calm down, or sometimes get ejected. That's different from the way that most of us, in the course of an argument write stuff that'd be better unwritten. It also ought not to be confused with the way that sometimes we can be too sensitive and ready to take offence, often leading to being too ready to give offene. As the old football slogan goes "Get your retaliation in first" Never a good idea.

But most of the time it's friendly enough, and pretty interesting. It's probably true that some people have tranferred their online activity more to Facebook. I just can't get my head round that, too public and to private at the same time. It seems to be all about communicating specifically to one person, and having lots of others listen in. Here most of the time you just talk to the room. But the facebook approach clearly appeals to a lot of us.