From my perspective, Hubski is a dynamic hotbed of provocative discussion. But for several months, this has happened almost entirely in personal correspondence and not in public.

I would prefer to be more open, but a tiny number of vocal users tend to spice their intellectual disagreement with doses of condescension, mockery, and name-calling. While I recognize that these aspects do not diminish the strength of their ideas, it is sufficiently annoying that I prefer to keep out of public discussions.

Among the thousands of words I have excreted into public dialog, I hope very few of them were antagonistic toward another person, unsparing as I may have been in criticizing their ideas. I keep in touch with a couple of other former users, both scrupulously polite, who have quit the site after encountering needless hostility toward their non-Hubski-mainstream views. And I find myself always wishing that my favorite non-conforming users would expand more, rather than keeping to short, throwaway comments.

I don't think moderation can fix this, though I am still partial to my proposal. There is a kind of Gresham's Law in any open forum by which the bad (vitriol) drives out the good (civility). Nevertheless, Hubski is the best public discussion forum ever conceived.