hughrbeyer

I appreciate the OP. Props to you, Marc.

Re "community," let's not argue semantics. AikiWeb is a community by virtue of being a place where people gather (virtually) with common norms and expectations, enforced by Jun, peace be upon him, and by other posters as well.

Any community needs a way to police its norms. I know at least one web forum that does no moderating at all, but they are just brutal as a community on information they consider misinformed or uninformed. We probably don't want to go that way, but in an online forum shunning doesn't really work. The uninformed individual can always post more drivel, and there will always be enough people who don't know it's drivel to keep up the conversation.

I think if we're to survive as an art, and if we're to measure up to the Founder's vision, we have to be willing to hold ourselves to a certain standard. Tohei came to the US and took on five judoka at once; O-Sensei attracted some of his best students by defeating them in "contests." I don't expect I'll ever operate at that level, but if I'm not willing to put myself on the line at my own level, what am I doing here? I should be playing tiddlywinks.