It's OK to start an intro thread?

Minerva perhaps. And this is one of the many universes.

Does that happen a lot?

That much is true.

Understanding this place is not that hard when you've posted on internet fora before. A lot of the style is present in various other communities albeit in slightly different combinations and degrees.
I will say that at times it does exhaust me a little because (especially as a woman) I feel I can't just be myself. Else I'd have to consistently feel offended. So when you meet somebody like John Castle it gets tricky. When he uses tedious old sexist tactics to try and shut up an "uppity woman" by calling her names ('sugar tits', 'ho') there are only so many ways you can react.
You can tell him you're tired of gender-based insults and that you find it offensive and asinine (hint: it is). What follows are usually more insults and obviously the accusation: "Man, you sure don't have a sense of humor.". Well, no. I'll laugh when you say something funny and not random sexist crap women get to hear all the time anyway.
The alternative is to be hard-skinned and ridicule the guy. This can be a lot of fun cause yes, he obviously is an idiot who deserves ridicule and in most cases it's pretty easy for an educated woman to make these people look like the muppets they are. Here's the catch, though: If there are too many guys like that in a community it gets really exhausting and in the long term it's got a psychological effect on you: It makes you more cynical and jaded. On a subconscious level it makes you believe that most people are jerks. And the problem is: I don't want that. I don't want to become cynical.
I'm quite happy with what I am and thankfully I'm not surrounded by jerks in real life. In fact I hardly ever meet any jerks. Now that might be down to living in one of the most liberal places in the world, spending most of my time in Academia and just generally being nice to people. It could also be down to online communities inviting a lot more of the toxic crowd: People who have failed at life (be it social or professional), who have become lonely cynics, people who miss the days of white man privilege, people who were too stupid to get a proper education, people who are just really tired of the fact that they can't really be hateful bigots in public anymore and who need online fora to vent.

Obviously these people are a minority even online. There is a surprisingly high number of genuinely reasonable people on this forum. Yet the idiots tend to be a quite vocal minority and sometimes dealing with them is not worth it. It's more fun to just enjoy the real world and not argue with idiots who simply don't matter to your real life. What John Castle writes here doesn't really affect any of us. In the real world hateful bigots and trolls don't run shit. At least not where I live.

Another way to deal with this shit is pretending to be a man online. That's what tandelou is doing of course (Or is he/she not?).

The bottom line is that I haven't yet decided if I should really bother. Some of the discussions have been interesting but some others have been pretty useless exercises in sophistry. They're not productive discussions because some people aren't interested in intellectually honest debates. They just want to have the illusion of "winning" and employ logical fallacies and intellectual dishonesty to achieve that goal. It's not really worth arguing with these people cause I don't get anything out of it.

Oops, I accidentally gave you a serious reply.

What I really meant to post was: I'm here because of the picture in Bickendan's signature. I could watch that all day.

I was expecting a denial! Put it this way, the rate that this place gets new members make the suggested scenario more likely.

That much is true.

John Castle is nothing more than a pointless failure of a man who is not worth the time of day, unless it's for mockery or derision.

As for intellectual debate, the problem here is that the community has become so old and over familiar that proper debate mostly left years ago. When this place was new there was plenty of it and some of it was good quality. But then we had more active members back then as well and those that are still here posted in greater volume.

No need to be exhausted, or discouraged at all. If you feel your being trolled, troll back. I can be a nice diversion and it's better then watching television. Marginally.
You can get good debates here; it just depends on whom you chose to engage. Spending that much time arguing with John Castle and Oldfella is pointless and can make anyone feel tired. And outside of the Red Room there are many other forums you can explore and relax in. We have forums for creative writing, discussing all forms of media, one for video games, the Blue Room is for discussing life issues, almost your own mini-blog, and the Green Room is like the easy going chit chat you might have in your local pub.
Wordforge is much more then the Red Room, and you might find that you'll gain more enjoyment of the place as you explore all that it has to offer.

It *is* mesmerizing.

Well, she's not been back since the posts above, probably because she's been a bit shocked by the overt WF style trolling reception she has received probably because she's a fucking commie Euro dual.

It is not completely impossible that she might be spending at least part of her weekend away from a computer.

If that's the case, she's no Wordforger.

What's that you say?

Crazy, isn't it? I was out till 3am on Saturday and had friends over for dinner today. I will be at your service again tomorrow.

I was really busy, myself. But now I'm back. I'm sure you all missed Vallejo more.

I didn't!

I believe I said before that I'm not a dual, which is true. I agree with Vallejo that WF is not a hard place to figure out if you're used online forums before. I've been debating on forums for over 15 years. They all work more or less the same way, the only difference is determining a given forum's general tone and who the major personalities are. I'll try not to hold John Castle or Federal Farmer against the rest of you (too much.)

Every class need it's clowns. Besides, when you poke them with a stick hard enough, their reactions are....entertaining.

John Castle and Federal Farmer are about as far away from "major personalities" as you can get.

It's the quiet ones you need to keep an eye on...

*ducks

*chickens

You wish.

Oh yeah?

Sadly I must inform you that the bovine genocide has killed all the cows on Jupiter (Thanks for that, Denmark...). We've now started milking whales to produce our cheese. Just in case any of you own a whale: We're paying good money. Send me a pm.

Hah!