As for your community and the general safety of the community, that is very interesting. I’ve never tried to create a listserv list here – or a google group for closed door discussions. But it has been fun to see all manner of opinions happening here in a relatively safe way. I’ve also noticed a difference on places like Reddit, if you are the Op for the thread, you are given deference that you just would not be afforded if you were a commenter with a differing opinion, right? The fact that I am putting an idea out there, and allowing it to be our springboard gives me grace with community. And yet, people have been fairly sane with responding to differing opinions. But thanks for comment good sir. That is an interesting perspective.

For about 15 years I ran an email list call the Freeflight list, where we discussed living with and training pet parrots to fly outdoors. As a professional showman and bird trainer, I was the founder and main supporter of the list. It was a fair active list. Other professional trainers bashed me and the concept elsewhere but never on my email list. In fact we virtually NEVER had any one liner troll posts like you so commonly see on Facebook or youtube. We had plenty of deep and sometimes heated debates over a variety of on topic and off topic subjects. Again, 15 years worth of them. Though we never had one liner personal attacks we did attract a couple classic trolls, that were there only to stir controversy, usually claiming to have experience they obviously lacked. I moderated such people and was polite and direct with them. They usually went a way fairly quickly. We also had another form of troll, less recognized. These were people who were on the list, not to learn in support of the topic of the list but to were there to find info they could use against us, the concept and more likely use against me personally. The list functioned quite well for many years but began to deteriorate as more and more “loyal Chris haters” either changed from my supporters to enemies or outside enemies joined the list. Eventually the list ceased to be manageable because of too many such hater trolls. And then the internet marketers joining trying to take the info handed out freely to sell as their “own creations.” To avoid supporting these internet scammers, I stopped posting to the freeflight list and switched to doing power point based 12 hour flight training classes – far more successful in producing people flying parrots, compared to 15 years of email list resulting 10-20 people flying parrots. For the most part for many years we had a very civil email list. We did not have nasty attacks but we did attract people who became nasty when they were not allowed to function as “internet experts” due to their obvious lack of actual experience. Some who had some limited level of experience flying parrots grew to be quit hateful when their opinions or level of experience was not acknowledged by me as equal to my own – I was always respectful but would rarely change my position on some controversial subjects due to their input. For perspective I fly parrots outdoors every day and in complex environments no one else dared get near with their birds (view videos at http://www.libertywings.com), over 70 birds, 2500 months of combined flying time, compared to someone flying one bird a couple times a week in the same neighborhood park. I took my list members opinions seriously, but did not give credit to expert status unless they could demonstrate what they were doing with their birds via photos and video, which no one but me could do until I started teaching formal classes.

So I suspect the quality of your reader is a huge factor, as is the level of moderation. But I also suspect that the subject matter itself is a factor, since everyone gets to have an opinion that is taken seriously. Where we had a technical difference of expertise that was demonstrable via photos and video of what we actually did with our birds, creating a distinction between general opinion and opinions based on years of experience. I suspect you attracted people like Steven Spielberg or Joss Wedon to participate, a similar dichotomy would appear and some “wanna be experts” would start commenting as polite but hateful people also.