That's awfully revisionist history, if you look at the backlog of WWWs. The unnamed mod's stated motive for closing WWWs was always spam, and never "hostility." The bagging of heated discussion as public enemy number is a decidedly recent phenomenon, which I guess should be expected considering the sycophantic circle jerking that goes on now.
I would argue that it is quite revisionist to gloss over the sycophantic circle-jerking that has defined this community's greatest moments. And it is a
very recent phenomenon to tack against such friendly frottage in favor of causticity used to cauterize all ends of the passionate spectrum.
Of course, I contend the assertation that heated discussion is a bad thing: pointed disagreements such as the discussion on Ireland or rules evaluation in your very own BirdNES 3 preview thread had such heated discussions due to the contentious nature of disagreements and it was only through thorough dismissal of invalid points that truth and common sense prevailed.
Here we shall have to agree to agree. Debate (which intelligent types hope to keep civil, albeit spiced up by wit because this dead text needs a little life) is the lifeblood of non-game activity here. As cool as it is that I only play 3 more instruments and have facility with a mere 2 more languages than Kraz, I'd much rather engage with him, or Das or Karalysia or Dis or Bird or North King or Iggy
(not really Thalalalalalalyi but thats personal preference I suppose
) in historical or theoretical debate than wax braggadocio or wane pitiful about our accomplishment or life woes. Back in the AIM days, socializing happened naturally as friendships grew because of interaction or admiration. We shouldn't force it because we fear the silence. We should however, push each other intellectually (without being an gaping, stretchy @<snip> about it).
The recent Ireland debate is a great example, for two reasons. One is that it did clarify Dis's position for me, and I like to think that it fleshed out the debate in a substantial way (I cannot speak for Dis, but I learned some new facts). The other is that it illustrates how exchanges can be read in different ways by different people. I didn't read it as combative at all, and as quite genial (my affected anti-Saxon racism aside). But apparently others did. We should be careful to not tunnel vision the perception of these pixels and assume that all others impute the same emotion/tone that we do. We are a pretty diverse group, in the American Liberal Arts college sense of diversity (a.k.a. "we're really white and male and young so lets weight geography a lot and single out our minorities to an uncomfortable extent. Also, lets not even talk about class, ok?").
I don't know if you're hitting me with a strawman
Assault with a deadly Oz character? How deliciously pomo.
I respond to posts I disagree with combatively regardless of the opposite, be it das or Lord of Elves.
On a personal aside (since it seems to be acceptable to dish out free advice that is worth as much as it cost in this thread), different sorts of posts would seem, reasonably, to warrant different sorts of combativeness. Obviously you're capable of machine-gun take-downs, and your apparent intelligence provides you enough ammunition to aim at whomever you'd like to. But not every situation calls for an assault rifle. Guns blazing 24/7 can, not to waste a good metaphor/callback, rub people the wrong way, which is considered quite impolitic in a circlejerk, sycophantic or not.
We just don't like our newer members getting uppity. We're all smart people here, and most of us are in college, so we don't like to be condescended to.
Ah, but if they don't get uppity, how will they ever rise?
Furthermore, the college qualifier is unNESessary. Those of us who are doing that whole college thing were once in high school and, usually, thought of ourselves as smart and not wanting to be condescended to back then as well. For the older folks, many of us were NESing when we were in high school and we certainly didn't think any less of ourselves then. North King was making some of the most beautiful non-earth maps to ever grace this community while he was in high school. Who knows which of these younger new members could slave over MSPaint and try to compete with his output. College as an institution and a culture is superior in every way to US high school (and you kids out there should give it a shot, ya heard!) but we're still just people justifying our changes with revisionist histories and flimsy concepts like maturity.
That's not really the point.
The point is, if you act in a certain way, people will find you annoying, and no amount of backtracking can erase that. You just mature, learn more about history, get more serious with your NESes, and hope that the in-crowd thinks you're cool.
Sorry if that sounds harsh or caustic, but that's how it works.
This is very good advice, and should be followed like golden yarn out of the neophytic labyrinth, if in-crowd coolness is what you seek (which is a totally acceptable and go-getter goal). You could also reject the in-crowd or stick around long enough that you transcend the in-crowd or start your OWN crowd (which the in-crowd will hate, but your in-crowd can then totally cold war hate on their in-crowd) or follow the path which seems to have emerged during my year and a half sabbatical (which i trace back at its roots to an emulation of S-D) and just kick the in-crowd and the out-crowd in their internet penises with your aggressive, take no prisoners,<snip>-you-guys-i'm-a-hefty-bag-of-douche-with-facts-to-back-up-my-<snip> style of play and posting until everyone has come to the consensus that you are exactly as you present yourself, a very intelligent dickhead with no use for social mores (or social Moors if you're in Iberia) who no one wants wants to cross, because their usually right. Just in the worst possible way.
I play the air guitar. Pretty wickedly if I may say so.
Lucky. I only ever learned Air Bass. We never get any of the girls
Your argument was ******ed to begin with. You then enhanced it by making remarks that would have made a neo-Nazi proud. Then to make the torrid episode more amusing you continued to defend it against all comers. So what was really at stake was whether I was going to let an argument best made on Stormfront go by. Then there was the whole Euro-centrism debate where you tried to change the definition of a word to suit your own purposes. It didn't matter that it already had a universally accepted academic definition. That didn't suit your pretensions to Stormfront membership or something.
I have no idea what it was about, but as a writing rule you should, if you feel that such a diatribe is needed, diversify your knowledge of racist organizations more. The multiple Stormfronts just seemed repetitive and the neo-Nazi label excludes a whole gamut of supremacists.
For some reason, nesing amongst all cfc fora, breeds a greater set of elitism than elsewhere. I suppose it is the whole thing being a competitive game to begin with. I am glad most can seperate ooc an ic, at least for gaming purposes.
Well, we are an elite competing to form an elite within that elite. Lack of eliteness would lead to a quick exit from NESing (in most cases) or a lack of ambition to even TRY to NES. Also, there is just a whole lot of unchecked testosterone (and, for many players, pituitary secretions) flowing through this forum and no other way to express it except occasional outbursts (because the satisfaction of crushing someone in war is a delayed gratification since updates are slow).
P.S. Why is there a vulgarity shield?
Moderator Action: A grand post Swissempire. I did a little snipping to clean up language that crosses the rules line. 
I don't understand what weaknesses I'm obscuring. Those are terms appropriate if this was a debate and I was BSing, but neither is it that nor am I doing so. I'm seeking conversation, and it seems that you think I'm lobbing grenades or something. I just truly don't understand the dismissal. I'm not looking for a dethroning, I have no ambitions in here. I thought this was a dialogue going on. If my opinions were baseless or unjustifiable, then I suppose a proper rejoinder would be pointing it out and asking for clarification or demonstrating its idiocy. If we were arguing and you truly couldn't deal with the length or word choice of my posts, I would summarize and modify for you. But the reaction is kind of just "ZOMG WORDS", when really there isn't anything to be zomging about. 
