A long time ago I was a member of an IRC board called "The Well", started in the mid 1980s where there were really robust and interesting chats. I think it started on PicoSpan which was available to us in college through Unix terminals. The Well still exists though has an annual fee to keep the riff-raff out. I have not seen it since 1993 or so. Characters like author William Gibson would get involved sometimes. There was a lot of early cyberpunk and tech-savvy literary crowd around. I just asked ChatGPT for a list of other options. "General High-Quality Discussion Forums: 1. Metafilter – Thoughtful moderation, but leans left and can be a bit of an echo chamber. 2. LessWrong – More focused on rationality and philosophy, but political discussions do happen. 3. The Motte (Reddit-based) – A place for steelmanned, well-reasoned arguments from multiple perspectives. 4. Front Porch Republic – Conservative-leaning but intellectual, focused on localism and political philosophy. 5. Crooked Timber – More academic left-leaning discussions. 6. Marginal Revolution Blog – Economics-driven but with solid political discussions. If You Want a Bit More Edge and Debate: 7. Quillette Circle – Free-speech leaning, heterodox thinkers, but can drift into grievance politics. 8. Areo Magazine – Similar to Quillette, a mix of centrist, classical liberal, and left-libertarian views. 9. Forum on the American Mind – Intellectual conservatives, but more policy-focused than populist. 10. Unherd – Thoughtful essays and discussion threads, often contrarian. Would you prefer a more curated group (e.g., invite-only) or just a place with reasonable moderation and high discussion quality? "
Since I started looking into ADHD treatments for my (fairly mild) case, I’ve noticed my tolerance for noise over signal around here has dropped, especially with the right-wing crowd getting too much airtime. Some are clearly aging out, showing early signs of dementia. Others seem completely detached from reality, the kind you'd imagine living in an institution or relying on family to take care of them. They just don’t seem viable for real-world survival. Can we actually fix the political discussion here? Maybe put out some flyers for right-wingers (or others) who can walk and chew gum at the same time?
Commies are commies Commies steal kill lie Power needs to be decentralized to prevent corruption. Trump's gonna break up your global monopoly.
I appreciate the intent, but I think the execution can be better... If I were on the right and saw that poster I would probably feel attacked and immediately antagonized. I think the other thread started by you hits the mark closer ("It’s Not That We Don’t Hear You"), although the elitist undertones Tsing Tao mentioned are there. I think it's difficult to have a meaningful debate without some ground rules.