Slight personal note on forums

A few days ago I dared to raise a topic for discussion in a public forum (an LJ community), something which I'd avoided for months after several online flame-fests last year. I'm giving myself a pat on the back for refraining from many of my bad old habits (devil's advocate, overt baiting, over-generalizing and failing to delineate personal contexts) and even managed only the slightest hint of self-deprecation in debate. I'm not going to link to it here, because I have no desire to resurrect that particular discussion now. But the tone and tenor of the comments offered by others were constructive and respectful, some of them were useful, and there were no flames in about 60 comments. (smile)