Polite Rules for discussing Audio related things

I sense the belief the official moderators are reviewing every thread post in the entire forum. That’s clearly not happening.

If an OP who moderated and removed legitimate posts on a whim, then an official moderator can review those deleted posts, restore them if the posts seem valid and on point, and curtail the moderator privileges of the OP.

The OP, as opposed to an official moderator, is more likely going to be reviewing the thread. But that would not excuse the official moderators from doing their requisite oversight.

But I suspect the true reasons for lack of civility in forum threads pertain to folks coming to the thread late, only to read the last remark of the latest post, as opposed to reading the OP’s intro, let alone to reading EVERYONE’s contributions.

If everyone followed this rule, then maybe the desires of the OP would be met for the thread. Let me demonstrate my point before jumping all over me.

To wit, elizabeth made a post on 07-29-2018 at 2:01pm that was very similar to my original post today. I FAILED MISERABLY not seeing it earlier, which precipitated the same sort of knee-jerk reactions from the gallery, like those to my post.

My bad. Sorry. 😬

Whatever happened to Socratic Circles, consisting of (from Wiki) "cooperative argumentative dialogue between individuals, based on asking and answering questions to stimulate critical thinking and to draw out ideas and underlying presumptions." "The Socratic method is a method of hypothesis elimination, in that better hypotheses are found by steadily identifying and eliminating those that lead to contradictions. The Socratic method searches for general, commonly held truths that shape beliefs and scrutinizes them to determine their consistency with other beliefs. The basic form is a series of questions formulated as tests of logic, intended to help a person or group discover their beliefs about some topic, exploring definitions or and seeking to characterize general characteristics shared by various particular instances."

That doesn't sound like anarchy or existentialism to me, and usually I look for discourse that follows this method, but it's been awhile since I took philosophy back in college and since I last read Plato, Camus, Sartre or Hume.

Audiogon should have just said, "OK, we're starting an Asperger's Support Group--forums are now open."  

Hume: "We can't know anything for sure." Including that statement.

Given the heated discussions regarding cable burn-in (etc) maybe Hume should be the patron saint of audiophiles.

I think the problem with a Socratic model (as defined above....I know nothing about it) in regard to how it relates to the contentious topics here is that so many of them are so very subjective and that there is often a very even demarcation between believers and naysayers. Both of these are hard to overcome in a Socratic model.

Nevertheless, it certainly stands head and shoulders above personal attacks and incivility.