I’ve also noticed a gradual change in the dominant ‘tone’ of the forum over the past six months or so. I’ve been reading and posting less because of increasing demands on my time, but I’m still here enough to feel like things are changing
I think it is largely that a lot of topics have shifted from a ‘how can we learn and improve’ tone to a ‘there is one way, and it is X’ tone.
As a recent example - there are parallel threads about polarized training (and Dylan Johnson) that are getting lots of posts. If you look at the one about Dylan Johnson and polarized training - there are a lot of people sharing positive and negative experiences with polarized and pyramidal training. It is a learning focused thread. However, if you look at the thread from this week about Dylan criticizing TrainerRoad many of the same topics are being discussed in a tribal and extremely defensive manner. People are ‘demanding’ a response, people are leaping to TrainerRoad’s defense, it’s just a fruitless discussion whereas the older thread (which is still active) is much more supportive and analytical. Less dogmatic, etc.
Don’t have a solution, just my observations