People may not realize that what they do here has turned other people off, to the point where they leave. They may, in fact, not care, because they think they have a right. Maybe they do, but that doesn't mean what they do or say doesn't affect anyone else.

What bothers me is not that we seem to have become an arena for a small number of assholes. It's that a larger number of kind and knowledgeable people have left. I also remember "in da olden times" when people would gather in threads, or in HearMe, and the people would be from the US: New Hampshire, Wyoming, California, the UK: London, Hull, Norfolk, from Ireland and Scotland, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, China, Japan, Poland, and probably other places I can't remember.

The point is, people can join in that culture of shit-slinging, they can continue to post and ignore it, or they can decide it's not worth the bother and leave... or at least not post anymore. It's not just the addition of the negative that makes Mudcat less, it's the loss of positives.