Not necessarily. Look, I'm not that old, but I'm old enough to remember the dial-up BBS days, message boards back before everybody and their brother had internet access. There was something nice about that, a tight knit and savvy group of people gathered online around a shared interest. Then broadband access in every home happened, everybody got online, and as things diluted, that niche feeling disappeared.
One of the main things I liked about TSW was it still had a little bit of that old-school online vibe. Was it free from trolls and other malcontents? Certainly not. Am I the most well-behaved denizen here? Hell no. A good percentage of my contributions tend to be in the form of sarcasm. But at the end of the day, I knew this was a place I could come to read a lot of interesting content by smart people. Like a small gathering of like-minded buddies at a bar, shooting the sh*t. Now I fear it's headed more in the direction of the beer tent at a county fair. Still fun, but a lot noisier, and a lot more bad behavior.
But that's what happens. Progress, right?