As to the question of argumentation, the list I'm
talking about
("wikien-forum" in my proposal) would be specifically biased against
argumentation and direct replies to individual points. Most
contributions would have to be able to stand on their own: thematically
related to the thread, but no quoting, ranting, or kvetching. People who
want to have direct discussions would be encouraged to do so, just not
on the list.
How does that work? All conversation pretty much falls into two
categories - informative and argumentative. Informative takes the form
of question and answer, argumentative takes the form of
point-counterpoint. Either way involves each email being a reply to a
previous email. A dialogue does not consist of a sequence of
monologues, and mailing lists are intending for dialogues (or
polylogues, or whatever you call multi-way conversations). If people
want to post monologues, they can start blogs.