bcbm

Who?

Yes, but at least it makes for an amusing vegan story.

Yeah, I think I will never go to Portland because of the things you've told me about it. As for vegans, I agree. My brother alternates between phases of being a self-righteous vegan and phases of being a vile smack fiend with no moral qualms about such things as breaking into my parents house and pawning everything he can fit into the trunk of his car. Which makes it all the more special when he gets clean and starts condemning me for murdering cows... Gotta love vegans...

Then my job here is done.

typical os

typical os

Yeah, well in that case, we're in agreement. It's weird, when I occasionally stumble onto revleft threads from a year or so ago, the discussions seem to be (relatively speaking) much more in depth than they are now. It makes me wonder why the discussion level is so much lower now than it appears to have been back then.

So, I think what you’re describing – more polished, thorough exchanges – certainly has a place. But the idea that in order to have this, you have to overhaul existing discussion forums and impose these rules there… I just don’t follow? I mean, otherwise it’s a good idea; it just sort of seems like they took a break to huff some nitrous just before drawing the conclusion...

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I was not meaning to suggest that exchanges along those lines was a bad idea; it’s not. In fact, to my knowledge, there are a number of blogs that operate in relatively similar form to what you’re describing. But I think it is something very different than discussion forums have, and I don’t think already-established discussion forums with active memberships would be the appropriate place to impose "rules of engagement" such as those. Probably, if you did, you would see the number of regular members drop like a ball of lead. It seems to me that what you are describing serves a somewhat different purpose than discussion forums like revleft, where – in the case of the latter – people who do not have fully-formed politics or theoretical knowledge can come and relay their ideas and hopefully be engaged and learn some things, and most importantly IMO, you can express your opinion without having to take the time to write an essay.