I saw it mentioned in this thread (amongst some interesting introspection and soooooo much bickering it made my eyes want to explode - I just read everything here since Hog's ban) that there's a sense of a prevailing 'feeling' in the clinic, that any earnest point brought up will be shouted down in sarcastic and unhelpful ways, and that this may cause many posters to not post there. Although I certainly don't think that's all the clinic does, that generally does sum up my experience there. I've learned a lot from that forum, especially in the time before the Reasoned Decision, which coincided with Froome's ascendancy, when the points about how unlikely it was weren't yet tired. But yeah, I find the ratio of posts that are essentially smugly saying 'well that person's doping because everyone does and we're always lied to and you're an idiot to believe otherwise' make a high ratio when compared to those that use power analysis, reflection on insider knowledge, non-'everything is a conspiracy' speculation, etc. As well, I just find it discouraging and depressing to wade through constant interpersonal back-and-forths, be they more or less wordy versions of 'of course you would think this, you always think this'. I stick to the CQ Games threads and some of the info on the Road page, mostly.
Like (now former) poster nhowson said upthread, the in-fighting is really, really tedious, and when it makes up the bulk of threads it becomes hard to ignore (although I've become pretty good at it). Perhaps others have more patience than I, but I guess my thought is just that I've been pretty into this message board since its inception and sometimes I feel like I should just never bother coming back to it again, and the sheer volume of interpersonal fighting is the main reason I feel discouraged from posting. Just want to at least put that on written record, lest people think that the fact that posters are relatively silent about this means it doesn't matter to anyone. Moderation is more or less present in different threads at different times, but regardless, I appreciate how difficult it must be to moderate this forum. I could never do it.
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