Wasn't exactly an idyll, but there was a widespread belief that you abided by some basic standards, just as you might if going to a restaurant compared to sitti

Wasn't exactly an idyll, but there was a widespread belief that you abided by some basic standards, just as you might if going to a restaurant compared to sitting at home in your boxers. Or as dang and sctb try to enforce here. It wasn't that homogeneous, nor always comfortably off. Certainly some groups were hugely over-represented. A lot of the early non-tech groups, and BBS's before them, had a surprisingly wide distribution. You could have a civil discussion on uk.politics with diametrically opposing views. Most didn't degenerate into a flame war, of course some did. Occasionally actual politicians would show up. Or authors in writing groups. Try that today on /r/politics. The largest change was losing netiquette. Every new join, whether techie, scientist or whatever, was expected to read and abide. Once people started arriving in volume those basic "rules of the club" rapidly became meaningless. No one cared to listen. As people moved through forums, to the social networks the idea of moderation or self accountability at all, died stone dead. Everyone apparently now expects to be just as crass and offensive as they like, because "free speech". I don't think much of that change could have been avoided. I do think the social networks could have decided to enable moderation far more than they have.