Forums accommodates the style of conversation that actual conversation often doesn't. In person, the people who talk the most, loudest, or most vehemently often just end the conversation, whereas Forums has room for the conversation to get passed from person to person as a matter of design. I think a lot of information and thoughts surface that might get silenced by the loud voice or excessive energy of a self-appointed "presiding officer." Too few venues of conversation provide for this. I've been to only a few parties where the conversational ball was really passed around. Some Native American tribes had an object passed from hand to hand to signal that each person could speak and was expected to do so. Rather than a few people, or one person, holding forth entirely. It's no small feat.
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