Phrononix’s forum is known for having some of the most toxic individuals in the open-source ecosystem, with flame wars, pointless complaining and arguing happening usually starting within the first 10 comments.
I have no idea why or how it got so bad there specifically, but it’s bad. Though oddly enough, in-between all the negativity, will be developers of major systems, like AMD driver engineers, calmly talking with other big movers in the industry.
I guess it’s one of the few sites that is dedicated to reporting on such things, but boy howdy is it an odd mix of spiteful users and developer networking.
It’s kind of hilarious though, when I’m bored I sometimes just browse the comment of some controversial topic on phoronix, to watch users get into the most vicious, time consuming arguments over pointless things. The fact that it’s interspersed with random engineers from AMD or whatever makes it even better
The reason it is so shit is that because there is NO moderation whatsoever (nor there is any care for having it, as there wouldn’t be cases like someone that had done ban evasion twice still being active on the forums otherwise). And I think I can safely say that it is just like the same as other social media:
More heated and stupid arguments = more page clicks and views = more ad revenue (Michael definitely inserts some ads into the forums, like come on now)
I have absolutely no regrets using adblockers on there (or internet-wide), and Michael has the GALL to call his subscription service “Premium”… unbeknownst to him that a golden coated excrement is in the end… still a piece of excrement. :V
