I felt sometimes like leaving this place, but then people wouldn't be learning from my insight. I can care less about fame, in fact I laugh about how some things turn out. Visit my profile and look at those who vote negative which don't yet have posts or contribute to the community. They refuse truth and would rather just bob around in the toilet for their daily apples than complete their games. I for one can't say I won't leave, but I don't expect to leave anytime soon. You chose your path, you want to explore and sniff out the cracks of how and why. I challenge you to sniff out the cracks of public relations and marketing, advertising, business, investing. Hope you can meet that challenge.

I agree with everything that has been said
I miss the old days too, but may be, like Tanczos said, we're biased because we're naturally inclined to be nostalgic ("the old ways have always been better") as a result of growing up.

Good look in your future endeavours!

In a way, every spirited technical discussion that takes place makes it slightly less necessary for there to be technical discussion on the same topic in the future, since a permanent record is made. That is not to say that there is no need for technical discussion, but a site like gamedev.net attracts a great deal of beginners and lower intermediate-level developers. The technical discussion likely to take place in such a group tends to mostly be technical discussion that has already taken place, hence the "Google it" style of answers. Once the availability of knowledge reaches a certain point, then a forum environment makes less sense than a knowledge-base environment (however that is to be structured). At least in my opinion, and I've been around long enough to see the same topics being discussed over and over and over. I must admit to a certain amount of "Google it" answers in my own past, as it does get wearying seeing the same topics come up over and over, knowing that the exact answer to a question lies in the forum history and being unwilling to do the research for the asker.

I've also been around long enough to understand that, like Michael said, nostalgia is easy and often inaccurate. There has always been gamedev.net's requisite share of troll, rtfm-ers, google-it-ers and so forth. People have always been lazy and impatient; it's a part of being human. The lens of nostalgia is sometimes smeared with rose-colored grease because it is [i]our[/i] past we remember, while the new present is being forged by someone other than us, someone obviously stupider and less patient than we were.

If you don't believe me, just take a look at the [url="http://www.gamedev.net/forum/11-game-programming/page__prune_day__100__sort_by__Z-A__sort_key__last_post__topicfilter__all__st__42600"]first page of the Game Programming[/url] forum archives. Outside of a certain era-specific bent, it actually looks not-unlike the Game Programming forum of today. You take any slice of internet history and you're going to find relatively the same proportion of trolling, stupid jokes, beginner questions, and occasional interesting discussion, from today as you would find in 1999 (the year of the posts on the linked page).

So basically, it's teh intarwebs. It is what you make of it, and if you expect an always-serious and sober intellectual discussion, then you might get that. Sometimes. You might also get Rebecca Black references or links to Rick Astley videos instead. It doesn't really matter where you go.

But at any rate, good luck in your future projects.

Good luck to you blewisjr - glad I got to feature some of your posts here before you left! Doors always open of course if you ever get bitten hard by the gamedev bug again

[quote name='JTippetts' timestamp='1312828593']
In a way, every spirited technical discussion that takes place makes it slightly less necessary for there to be technical discussion on the same topic in the future, since a permanent record is made.
[/quote]
One of my fantasy projects has always been incorporating the old forum replies into the Wiki for an even better reference. Sooo much work. Would be pretty cool tho IMO

@Gaiiden:
Thinking out Loud: Just like the "like/dislike" button, make a "propose for Wiki" button for the thread.

On a separate section of the site, list topics with most wiki proposal hits first and call it "what's hot in Gamedev" in front page. Above the listing it should read that the staff is asking for YOU to volunteer to format and structure it as a wiki. For each thread there should be a link to an empty wiki page so that there aren't two persons writing two wiki page based on the same thread.

So, in order to start a Wiki article, there would be [b]only 2 clicks necessary[/b]: one to enter the "what's hot" list, another to go to the empty (may not always be empty) wiki page. Simple as that. If you make it simple, you'll suprise how many people will volunteer for it.

Once the Wiki page has been made, it should be tagged as "DONE", therefore the forum topic is moved from hot list to finished list.

Optionally, instead of adding a "propose for Wiki" button, reuse the number of likes (but don't substract the dislikes, otherwise topics with great answers will go down due to jerks answering stupid stuff). But I'm not sure if the number of likes is a good indicator.

good thoughts, thanks I have them noted down

Best of luck on all your future endeavors.

Also, nice [url="http://www.blogger.com/profile/05538300152239223490"]`stache[/url]! I have a larger / longer one (I handlebar it), but it's not as well groomed as yours. I've let my beard go to seed as well, so unfortunately I look half-crazed at the moment.