Rands - Excellent summary as always. I really like the UI and functionality that Discourse is offering to date. I've been following it's development for a couple of months. I, like yourself, spent time on BBS's well before WinSock was readily available and ISPs were the next frontier. My recollection is that the conversations were, as you suggest, more in-depth. To get the Internet to a place where these in-depth conversations happen again, I believe there is a social re-grouping that needs to happen that isn't likely to work with current means of promoting new start-ups and new software ideas. Specifically, a re-grouping of thoughtful people who legitimately want to participate in meaningful discussions. I'm at a bit of a loss as to how that would play out. My thinking is that most folks today are so addicted to the Twitter, Facebook and other formats of micro-communicating that I don't think it has mass appeal to all of a sudden go back to the days of being more in depth. Kind of like weaning a drug addict off of their addiction and back onto the sober life. As such, the fact that discourse isn't selling it's wares just yet and is looking for partners is probably wise. My sense is that the feedback they would be innundated with would be a lot of "Y wud i wnt this? Lol."