Steve Summit wrote

phoebe wrote:

...

Honestly, I think I am being discriminated against in this community because my patience for endless bickering is thin.

Hear, hear. Without belittling your concern, I'm sure you're far from the only person who feels this way.

(The saving grace is that, some if not much of the time, you can ignore the endless petty bickering and go off and edit the encyclopedia instead.)

Phoebe is of course right. Over the years, UseNet and mailing lists have proved little except who has the debating skills (not right on their side). This sort of contradicts something Solzhenitsyn wrote in 'The First Circle', about how prisoners with a running argument were made by their peers to do it in a threaded discussion on a blackboard; and that shortly it became clear who had won.

Come to think of it, it doesn't really contradict that: the spectators may still see better than the participants. But Steve is also right. WP shows that, where more is involved than mere debate, discussion online need not be so sterile.

Charles

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