Future of the BR...

[Philippus Flavius Homovallumus]

I feel like we had this discussion already, but it's possible I simply received a vision/imagined it/had some bad cheese a few weeks ago.

Either way, this issue has been on my mind also.

The thing that I think has changed is that there is a lot more mutual respect between the members that have stayed than there was a few years ago and the quality of debate has increased as a result.

This can't be a bad thing.

At the same time though, we have become very cliquey, and we are also no longer as tolerant of people who haven't spent as long around so many divergent voices as we have. Case in point, Kadagar and I get on reasonably well most of the time now, at least. That's because, all credit to him, he made the effort to have a manly sit down with me and we hashed some things out. We still don't agree on a lot of things, but we no longer think the other is nuts/morally bankrupt/intellectually dishonest.

So we don't fight, we just argue.

Cube, is also correct we jump on newcomers we consider insufficiently developed. Take the occasional Evangelical who braves these boards, he get mobbed by first the atheists, then the Catholics, then Sigurd, then someone calls me down like an angel of death to finally put him out of his misery. The last one lasted, what, six days? I quoted something like six Biblical verses at him and we haven't heard from him since.

He got zero support, from anyone, that because we mostly get on now as a group - but it's also a symptom of a greatly reduced number of voices, that there is often no one willing to give the newbie a chance.