NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Imp" data-source="post: 3922527" data-attributes="member: 40094">Having participated in online forums that have really made a fetish of "real discussion, debate and intellectual process" I have to agree with this sentiment, and my experiences with other places tell me that keeping things polite, while it may be desirable in itself, has got little to do with quality-of-debate.  But more importantly, quality-of-debate turns out to be kind of a bad goal to begin with.ENWorld, and web forums in general, are pretty lousy venues for argument.  Here, people "win" arguments by arch passive-aggressiveness and simple grinding persistence, in other places it may be a cutting remark, a thorough takedown citing multiple sources, or smelling blood and using pack tactics, whatever, in no place anywhere does the "I am convinced by the logic of your statements, I am now a convert to your point of view, thanks you for this discussion" scenario happen except once in a blue moon.  Usually it's just an endurance and volume contest.  What forums are very very good at, however, is the sharing of ideas and perspectives, with an eye towards creativity, which is why the "how can I do X" or "how do I run Y" threads are such fun and filled with useful stuff and don't really have these problems.But the 4E forum is different because it's essentially powerless.  It's the airings of hopes and grievances to the indifferent heavens, that concerns may possibly be answered.  So there isn't any sharing to be done, really, just trying to "win" arguments in the hopes that they'll have an impact.  You're not going to be able to change the spirit of this here, in this sub-forum.  The best you can do is kind of keep a lid on it....by the way, this place doesn't have real trolls like you see elsewhere.  The mods are far too sensitive to allow such personalities to emerge (which is good).</blockquote>

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