Maybe we all get on so well because we've done the hard yards through other forums and recognize the pitfalls. It always seems to be people new to forums who get all angsty. They don't understand the subtle difference in communication style to the way social media dialogue rolls.
Good forums have room for kidding around, for politely reasoned spats, for deep and meaningful obsessive bullsh*t, even for what we're having for dinner, without quite dropping into twitterdom or facebook traumas.
Good forums allow a little time for members to get to know each other, the styles and nuances of their thinking, and gain an appreciation of the deeper 'personality' behind the posts. Hard to do that with 2 short lines on Twitter.
Members live with variety in their lives and express a variety of moods correspondingly. Isn't that how life is? We have more than one single interest and mood or we'd be locked up. We can exchange experiences in different places that are actually of interest to someone from a different culture without it becoming a code red confrontation of the superiority of one over the other. We gain an understanding of
why things are done, and thought of, differently. That is the real prize to be won from good forums. It's about learning and conversing. It isn't a status competition as Facebook can be.
How many of us only hang out with people who have exactly the same views on everything as we do? That would be a pretty boring meeting, everyone just nodding and backslapping and then gazing into space because there's nothing left to talk about.
I've seen forums die agonizing deaths because of that syndrome. Once a core of zealots have chased all dissenters from their ranks they die of boredom and drift away to start a fight somewhere else. Vive la differences!
We can talk to different groups of people in real life without haranguing them with single issues. We can discuss topics to learn about them from their input of differing opinions, not merely to push our own opinion down their throats.
We don't learn near as much through our mouths as through our ears and eyes. Good forums are like good social clubs with various personalities and opinions discussed civilly and without differing opinions busting up friendships.
Of course we're also old enough not to already know everything too, that helps.
