I feel like everyone who has ever had an issue with Metafilter thinks the site "has become hostile/snarky/cynical over the past few years" regardless of the actual tone of the site at the time. I'm not sure why this is. The site was hostile as fuck when I joined it in 2004. There was a dude who used to start shit with me just because he was mad at the state I lived in.

I think people are right about the site being unwelcoming, but I can't find this era when it was.