Frank Kogan

I remember Krugman quoted some adversary saying publicly "I never said X," and Krugman pulls up on the Internet the transcript of an old piece where the adversary says exactly X, Krugman's moral being that in this Internet age it's much harder to pull off such dishonesty. I'm not at all sure he's right, though.

One thing that zines like WMS and Swellsville and Radio On had was an editor-ringleader-master of ceremonies, so there was someone pushing things in certain directions. Someone like that can act as both a prod and a memory, if a discussion is willing to have a discussion leader, and people are willing to lead.

Actually, most of the problems I see online were in full effect in WMS as well - e.g., scapegoating and straw men, people not knowing how to understand what others were saying and not knowing how to communicate and evaluate their own stuff, etc. My guess is that in the long run the Internet will do better not worse at dealing with these problems.