I find this intriguing that the person who argues that we need to be more inclusive to people of differing opinion then turns around and dismisses and ignores those of us who disagree with him.
I sense a minor inconsistency here...
Not a single person is on my ignore list. If you want to start on that road, I'd suggest going to someone else than me.
But you are not one of the reasons I diminished my role in this thread, so apologies if you got thrown in the mix. I will try to explain.
No need to seek intrigue, though. There is a certain set of people whom myself and them never seem to make any headway - and believe me, I've tried many threads' worth and probably gotten myself on many literal ignore lists for the noise such a clash creates. Unlike you, I have no aims of 10 000 messages.
Yet I think I've exchanged dozens or hundreds of my messages with many of the same people. With some, we never seem to find any common ground over this medium. No ground given by anyone, thus no mutual understanding generated. When it seems we finally get somewhere, the other party falls silent, even that little progress denied.
In this case (and
in this) I saw a thread evolving where a sole voice is the recipient of a dissection of a critical many - and that's all there is, and I see nothing fruitful coming out of it. The messages aren't evolving, there is no "ah, yes, I see that part of your point, true enough" by anyone, it is just a shred to pieces and/or ignore what can't be shredded to pieces. Even if I were to spend hours explaining, the likelihood of any material difference - even to the extent where people agree to disagree with real mutual understanding and respect - is very low. I'm not interested in that. I don't see anything fruitful for TMC about such a thread either. Very few topics in reality are so black and white that common ground couldn't be sought (even if disagreeing on parts of it), but for some reason I don't see a common interest to do that in such threads, and that's why participating gives diminishing returns.
I do acknowledge part of it must be simple miscommunication and misunderstanding, hence the reference to a round of beers, but I also must admit my cynicism that a part of it is simply to not give the opponent an inch, now that things have gotten a little polarized. With such a situation, who knows if I am better than my worse demons either, probably not. Like I said to bonnie about the ignore, I'm sorry too we couldn't make the communication work - it does take two to tango and I'm one of them, certainly.
With some others, like AnOutsider, I've created actual mutual understanding. I'd joust any issue with him any day. But these voices often bow out of threads quite early on and what is left is some fight to the finish.
Now, underneath this all there is still the point I've made for those who think it is relevant. If you think I have a point on how to make TMC more friendly and diverse, please do your bid to make it so. I think it would be for the benefit of all. If you don't think what I say applies to TMC at all, I can understand why you wouldn't find it relevant and that's fine too. I do respect that view as well. Trust me, I really do - and part of me letting it be is doing it exactly because of that.