Out of curiosity, I was browsing around my old haunt, LinuxQuestions.org forums and just re-discovered the reason why I don't participate there any more.

Quite simply: these kinds of never-ending discussions and debates over what are essentially non-issues. So much heat, so much angst, so much argument wasted when people could spend their time better in helping others or simply chilling out. I didn't read those threads in entirety because I'm too indifferent about such issues these days, but on perusing a few posts I got a reminder about how some things never change. And no, this is not aimed just at LQ.org. You get the same kind of thing on a lot of Linux communities in the internet and where the level of discussion is a lot worse than the examples I just gave.

There was a time when I was an active participant in more than one tech community and even took part in those kinds of debates. Now I have nothing against people on a personal level and quite a lot of LQ.org members and moderators are my good friends. The forum has got some great knowledgeable folk who help out newbies day-in and day-out with infinite patience and perseverence and a great admin team. And to be honest, of all the tech communities I've visited and took part in, LQ.org has probably got a more mature, level-headed crowd. But when you come across such kinds of threads with incredible regularity over a period of time, it has a depressing and numbing effect. Any sense of goodwill evaporates over heated arguments and there's no feeling that one is learning or discovering something new.

So I made a decision several months ago not to participate there or in any other tech communities online any more because there are too many tiring, never-ending debates like the ones I mentioned above, no community feel and no sense of appreciation for long-time contribution. I don't know why, but non-tech communities I find that people are so much more pleasanter, you get a broader mix of people with more tolerant and liberal attitudes who are generally willing to be friendly and indulge in light-hearted banter. At tech communities, you had better be careful about light talk or banter because you're quite likely to be flamed for being too jovial or being off-topic. Mild irony is mistaken for sarcasm and treated as a personal attack. People get too uptight and defensive about upholding their own positions. And more than anything, there's something so one-dimensional about tech-communities; a uniformity in thinking and a lack of in-depth, informed debate about anything remotely non-technical in nature. You probably do get one or two members in a hundred who're really intelligent, but those voices tend to get drowned by all the trolls who keep insisting on beating dead horses and reviving old flame wars. I sometimes think that even the trolls on non-tech communities seem more intelligent and amusing than trolls on tech forums.

I know I'm generalizing a lot and I'm as guilty as a lot of others in indulging in passionate discussions and even flame-wars in the past, but it's just that I've become too tired and too indifferent to waste my time posting regularly on online forums. This is not a research paper and I don't want to get too deep into the subject, but all I know is that writing a quiet blog with a small group of friends who drop by with a comment or two regularly and administering my own small community, LiteraryForums.org is enough for me.