Quote Originally Posted by Tahuyaman View Post
. Haven’t the blogs all been disabled or something?

Also my idea has nothing to do with avoiding being contradicted or corrected. It has to do with developing a substantive discussion where people can rationally disagree and challenge the views of others.
Quote Originally Posted by Tahuyaman
An echo chamber wouldn’t be the intent. It would be to preemptively omit people who you know can not participate in any discussion.


That's certainly a worthy ideal, and I believe that you're sincere when you say it's what you want to see and have available. In practice, however, I tend to think it would end up being an echo chamber - with only those whom the thread creator knows for certain are not going to disagree too strenuously (if at all) with his or her premise being allowed to participate.

Right now we have discussions wherein members are rationally disagreeing and challenging the views expressed by other members, and instead of their comments and criticisms being welcomed, their authors are being insulted, attacked and falsely labeled - often by the OP author himself.

Tahu, I think your idea is a fine one and it might even work IF this were a forum where a large majority of the membership were here to engage in serious, substantive, rational discussions. There may very well be discussion forums on the Net where that is the case, but tPF isn't one of them, and that is a fact which is proved anew every day of the week.

What I'm saying is that if any appreciable number of tPF members wanted "substantive discussions where people can rationally disagree and challenge the views of others" those discussions would be going on now. Honest criticisms and disagreements would NOT be met with hostility and personal insults. Posts by those obviously doing nothing but attempting to disrupt the discussion would be ignored rather than responded to, and the discussion would go on rather than being derailed.