Lilycrazy- There does seem to be something in the air lately, which I've noticed, too...especially on the kitchen forum.

I don't know why people feel the need to be rude and hurtful, rather than kind and helpful. I do know that I've had lots of very kind people help me at the cottage garden forum, so that might be a place to try.

Have fun with your garden this spring and I hope to see you on the forum...I promise to be as kind and helpful, as possible :)

I think I feel a couple of things. The hypercritical seems to parallel the 'hyper-cautious' - each person asking about something precipitate a warning about something. Example someone asking about blue flax recently precipitated a whole bunch of warnings about it being invasive even though it is a native plant. What is it supposed to invade?

Second, I see the rise in nastiness corresponding to the rise in Face-book and Twitter. Persons seem more into just exchanges than into the content of the exchanges.

Both these observations should get me severely scolded.

I've noticed the trend towards nastiness and rudeness, too. In fact, after years of being a lurker and reading/ researching but not posting, I've started trying to post answers as a means of countering the rude responses - not by directly confronting the rudeness, but rather by trying to be helpful to balance the rudeness.

Sadly, it's not just on the forums - it seems to be pervading everyday life that people are more and more thoughtless and rude, in business, shopping, etc. I chalk it up to both the busier pace of people's lives and the prevalence of "virtual" means of communication (twitter, facebook, linked in , etc as noted above). I liken it to the devolution of English grammar since the advent of email.

It's sad, so I try to counter it by offering help when I can, smiling at people in stores (and that gets me some weird looks sometimes!) remembering to say 'thank you' and 'job well done' at work, and so on.

Which leads me to why I'm so compulsive about gardening - plants are real, good soil is real, and some of the things I've planted will live far beyond me - quite different than my work life in the IT world (where rudeness as a social statement seems to abound!)

Garden happy, and be sure that those that are rude are trying to hide some inferiority complex! ;-)

It's nice to have a polite response. I usually get the ones who tell everything's poisonous, which is not really a bad thing, but sometimes you need some of the poisonous to make some of the good grow.

People are compelled to answer, even if it's just to say something rude. If you don't have a nice reply, avoid the thread, the person writing does have a right to ask. It does put a damper on those who would legitimately have answered before all the drama. They avoid troll threads, don't feed into them. But then the person asking the questions doesn't get the good help.

Good luck and hope you find a nice crowd. The more you post, the more of a following you will have with legitimate gardeners.

lilycrazy may people answering question are just sick of newbies asking stupid question or asking question that have obvious answers.
Surely newbies can do some basic research before starting new post and garden most posters are over age 16 which should suggest they have some basic intelligence.

lurkandkibitz i am not nasty I just don't like whining babies.
albert_135 twitter and facebook have nothing to do with it.
ps invasive also mean it with crowd out other plants, restrict or retard their growth.

A blog on nytimes.com The Old Internet Neighborhoods specifically mentions ivillage and suggest Facebook and YouTube may be part of the problem.