It's interesting to watch how my writing style has developed on internet discussion boards over the past few years. I've developed a rhythm which helps me to attract other people to talk with, and allows me to have long in depth conversations with them.

The first thing, of course, that one has to recognize - is that different sites have different levels of foot traffic coming by. I love websites where you can have an in depth conversation over the course of a few hours of posting back and forth with people. At most discussion boards it takes weeks or even months to complete a single conversation. That's really unworkable, I think.

I'm thinking about starting a discussion board of my own. And I'm calling it a "mail and reader" - because it will no doubt be more like that - a place for intellectuals to exchange ideas back and forth, sporadically as if by mail; and of course other folks who walk by, can read the conversations. I'm still not sure I want to take the responsibilities of moderating a forum onto my shoulders. But I have yet to find an ideal place to chat with folks on the net. There's always a drawback that makes it hard. And I've been vigorously participating on web discussion boards for several years now. It'd be nice to have my own site, where I can set the parameters. Ideally, I think internet discussion boards ought to be moderated by the participants themselves - wikipedia style. But no one has created that kind of software yet. If no one else jumps on it over the next couple of years, I might have to create it myself.

The second thing that's important, is that it's good to challenge people. Challenge the mainstream opinion on an issue. Question the background behind someone's attitude, if you find it disagreeable. If you fish for responses in this way, you'll have more and faster paced conversations and you will have more opportunity to write. You'll get a lot more airtime for your opinions on a board, if you seek to correct diagreeable people. And it is a lot like the boat fishing which my family used to do on the lake on which our cabin was. We used to troll for fish. And one basically did nothing - sitting there for tens of minutes or even hours - waiting for a fish to take the bait on the line. You have to interject ideas into lots of different conversations, and then have a system (possibly with bookmarks) where you go through and check all your lines to see if you have a response anywhere. "Trolling" is a fascinating concept on the internet. Please don't giggle too much as you trip over eachother to comment, pointing out the similarities between my fishing allusion, and what folks on the internet decry as being odious.

There's something nice about anonymity on the internet, too. Since the dawn of literature, there have been certain topics which are taboo or controversial, which can be best discussed anonymously. These things can get people really riled up and upset. But, it's important for social progress that we talk about these issues completely and thoroughly, and allow others to put forth new models and outside-the-box appraisals about these things. Throughout even the past few hundred years of Western history there have been big public controversies over child labor, slavery, whether the earth was flat, the substances sold as food before the FDA was created (in the usa), homosexuality, communism, death. And in each of these cases, in order for the issue to be resolved, and healthy public policies to be put in place, you had to have free and open discussion about the topics. The internet has made this much easier recently, because of its tradition of anonymous public speech.

It's important to have a passion about the topic you're discussing. Although, when writing in a fit of passion, it is sometimes important to sit and look at what you're about to post, to see whether it needs to be rewritten so that it has the impact and the influence on the discussion that you intend it to have.

The most important thing I have found, is that one needs to have sincere caring about the other people in the discussion... and about the issue being discussed. If you are going to correct a troublemaker... you need to be working on behalf of her or his personal interests. And throughout the course of your conversation with that person, she needs to be able to see that (although many times she will not admit it).

The basic rhythm I've found in my in depth discussions is that deep conversations on the net is kind of like playing tennis (although in slow motion). You are sending the ball back and forth over the net. When the ball is in your court, you have the opportunity to reframe the discussion - to offer a different perspective on the issue (and optionally, you can also deconstruct your partner's motivations or try to discern the background which makes her or him write in that way). The person who can contextualize the issue the most thoroughly and most convincingly will win the debate.