Maybe its just me, but back in the day (early 2000s) we used to have raucous (but still very civil) discussions about controversial topics, with little or no moderator interference.

Shortly after cortex joined, submissions and comments which did not conform to a very narrow set of socio-political viewpoints started getting censored, and these days there is pretty much no room for controversial content.

Sure, I can see that the site would look highly civil and somewhat interesting to a new user coming from, say, Reddit, but to me the fanatic censorship has turned the place into a boring echo chamber compared to what it used to be.