Thanks for the nod of appreciation, NBN.
I'm sure UT will weigh in here with his usual insights about community sites, and we'd be interested.
Rather than "intelligent" discussion, which could be the territorial imperative of
www.adequacy.org and
www.kuro5hin.org, and others, it might be overreaching to aspire to a position anywhere higher than the name the Cellar implies.
At its very best, Cellar might be regarded as Uncommon Sense.
At its worst, Cellar suffers from a lack of social decorum at times, when members abuse the community and each other by communicating in ways that are universally unacceptable in real world communities. In civilized communities in the real world, such misbehavior is rewarded with the lowest rung of society. In the Cellar, such miscreants have the run of the place.
Perhaps the Uber Toad is just running an interesting sociology experiment where we are the lab rats in the Cellar, to see if a society can evolve in a virtual environment without apparent social order at the outset, only three rules, and no government ever.
BTW, I deleted this "off-topic" post from the other thread as a courtesy to others in that thread.
If the follow-up posts are likewise deleted, then that quality thread will be back on topic.