I don't remember that Ray, as I've only been on this site for a short time.
Does anyone remember when the questions on this site were about physics, astrophysics, biology, psychology, society, chemistry, history, real life?
Sorry, Ray, it was before the Ask invasion. But thanks for the question because I've often wondered what it was like before and how far we pulled it back.
In your opinion, is it better or worse now? We probably have more people but does the quantity make up for the quality?
I remember. There were hundreds of folks when I came over a year ago (?).
Posters started getting silly, nonsense, crazy, playful answers, most times folks posted stuff that didn't have any relevants to the question asked, soon it was avavalace of nonsense on the questions.
Christian and Biblical questions got attacked by mean hateful Atheistic hurtful answers and hundreds of worthless comments of debates, sometimes for days and days of utter nonsense of attacks on everything Christian and telling folks why the shouldn't be a Christian, never answering the question, just rants ;( .
I recommend this site to lots of people, but I warn them against posting Religious, BlackLivesMatter, How to become a Christian, Bible Scriptures and Politics.
I witnessed a lot of "Ugly" on these type of questions. As I mentioned before newcomers would ask these questions and all fiery hell would break lose.
Only came here after ask.com closed in 2015, so no.
But I have answered questions here that involved individually all of the subjects you have listed in this question---with the occasional combination of two or more in the same question.
And upon some reflection, I think there are more meaningful and interesting questions (at least for me) that involve real life issues to be found on this site than were ever extant on ask.com.
And I judge the moderators to be far superior on this site.
But, having actually answered your question in the first line of this response, I shall bid you temporary adieu.
Regards....
I must have joined the site during a transition time because there were only a few good questions like you describe Ray. I saw whole pages of someone asking the same question over and over. Pornography sites on the Discover page and a lot of nonsense. Wasn't much to answer then but I stuck it out. The "Quora" atmosphere has given way to a more community style site where people can enjoy themselves and have fun when they wish too. There wasn't much of any moderation then and lot's of profanity. I would like to see more questions like you said, Ray but time moves on and the members are all different now and I like it better. As far as the religious persecution described in one answer here ? I've seen very little of that but mostly debates about it. I know myself that I won't allow arguing and harsh answers to people's questions and we try hard to let everyone be heard.