have you ever learned anything useful from the Backroom?

[Blodrast]

I guess my position would be somewhere in the middle between KukriKhan's, and BigJohn's (minus the pic ). I definitely learned stuff in here; its degree of usefulness is, as always, difficult to appreciate. Is it useful for one to know some stuff about, say, another country/culture/ideology ? How do you appraise that ?

Anyway, yes, I believe it is one of the best possible environments of this shape there can be. There is a lot of maturity, moderation, logic and common-sense, educated opinions (and I don't mean "educated" in the academical sense), and humour.

There's some crap, too, of course.
It ain't perfect: there's people with fixed ideas or that refuse to accept the facts even when they smack them over their bottom; there's people with weird (to me) idelogies, or ways of perceiving the world. But overall, most of the time, it tends to work out a nice balance. Not always, mind you.

I also get bored sometimes of beating the same old couple of horses to death...same arguments over and over again...same people stating the same things (naturally)...

But nothing is perfect, and I never expected perfection when I came here. And although at a first glance I'm sure the Backroom looks pretty damn hostile to most newcomers, if one sticks around, one gets used to it.
(Man, I don't make many posts, but why the hell do I need to make a friggin novel out of each post ? )

Overall, yeah, I like the place, and (most of ) the people, and it's got its own specific flavour, that I enjoy most of the time. All in all, I believe it's one of the best things of its kind, and surely the best I've found yet. The light moderation is way more lenient than anywhere else I've seen, and, most of the time, this allows for a high quality of discussions, and a feeling that you can speek freely without getting worried that your posts will be censored or your mouth shut. Kudos to our moderators, past, present and future - great job !

I hope this place remains open and as pleasant (with a bit of spice, now and then ), because usually highly enjoy coming down here, for a with you fellas !

[Blodrast]

hmm, BigJohn, will you enlighten us by deciphering the pic in your post ? Who's the cast ?

Dave: where did you learn that ?! I definitely wanna see that thread !!...

[Big_John]

that pic is the magical gift that keeps on giving. it's like a single ray of sunshine in a dark world. it means different things to different people, like a beautiful tulip.

in other words:

hmm, BigJohn, will you enlighten us by deciphering the pic in your post ?

nope.

[Blodrast]

damn, I hate you. And tulips are boring. So there. Yeah.

[Kagemusha]

Id say yes.First off all i have realized how bad my english is.When i should say something very complicated,i get frustrated because of the lack of my voculabority.But i think i have learned something in almost every conversation ive had here in the backroom,or not.

[edyzmedieval]

Yeah, learned a lot of things.

I learned that JAG is a socialist with almost 11.000 posts and is not a Senior Member, Kaiser and Redleg are similar guys, PanzerJaeger is Hitler's friend, Proletariat is my'lady democratic, Gawain likes to be the Bronx guy of the forum ( ) and Byzantine Prince is the ironic guy who always gets banned.

Simple as that.

Oh, and Big John is the photo-guy.

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

I have because it feels good to get into heated debates and learn both sides of a story and make my decisions from there.

[Divinus Arma]

And I have learned that a "Swirly toilet fish" is not, in fact, a creative expression for human feces.

[swirly_the_toilet_fish]

Hooray!