All, Mike, whomever.
What a queer, meaningless and particularly craven vehicle - reactions to Zimmerman in electronic media - to have been foisted upon us here as some example of how "group-think" operates and how majorities and minorities work in human dynamic. As if that means anything to whether or not "RTJ can get a break" or "no one can deride TOC" without fear of ostracization.
For one thing, as some have noted previously, nothing could be farther from an objective analysis on this site. Here, it is my observation that the most radical opinions receive quarter and airing...sometimes being shouted down and parrying back is exactly what forms them into amalgamated, dare I say, "mainstream" views over time.
Christ, whatever meaningful wasn't a radical idea when it was proposed and developed?
To me Mike, this thread was just a Trojan Horse, just a device to interject some parroted political philosophy in the guise of a Board-centric" topic.
I can't evaluate that you make this offering and your various defenses with specific intent (e.g., you may be so inured and subject to these beliefs, that you no longer delineate).
But even if we went to the brighter side and said, "No, this matters to the enterprise of evaluating and enjoying architecture" and give the benefit of the doubt to good intentions and ignore this "Zimmerman context," how does what you're saying matter?
Is something going to change about the board or about rating systems?
Is there going to be a bar graph next to each thread measuring how well the last post clings or cleaves from a building consensus?
Are people going to stop chirping back, "How many times have you played it?" when someone goes into complex analysis of a place...
...is any of that going to stop or alter or amend or increase because you have now introduced us to the slippery bank of group-think?
I don't know for sure, but I'll take a chance and say that you believe in a God, maybe even the sunday-school God or the God of the Talamud.
Well I don't, and I can't think of any more insidious examples of group-think than those offered by:
"In God we trust" on the money...
"...shed his grace on thee" in the song
"so help me God," in court.
So work on THOSE first; explain THOSE as a model for group think...and then hit us with piss-ant Zimmerman on piss-ant FB, like number 12,006 on the charts.
cheers
vk