David Kane wrote:
Am I not allowed to express a preference for *informed* discussion?

Doing so by calling other discussants ignorant will lead to the
opposite effect. That is, unless you think only your own views qualify
as "informed" discussion. However, I again was mistaken. I thought
newsgroups were not for the experts or the informed, necessarily, but
for everyone to come in and join a discussion in which they might have
interest and want to learn something.

Again, my statement was clear that this was an extreme, to foster
dialogue. There are many examples of the scholastic community being
shown as driven by greed - Peterson's selling water at a buck per is
just one that is well known here. They may or may not be true; I've had
a passing interest in this for some time, and have never been able to
determine the truth. I am fairly sure that the megatournaments do more
harm than good (in my ignorant opinion), but I don't know what
percentage of scholastic chess this entails. I do know that as a junior
I avoided scholastic chess specifically because it did not seem like
the proper means in which to grow as a player. Was this a correct
decision? I will not dare answer, as only David Kane seems to have the
information needed to make his informed decision.

I've also served on several campus committees designed to protect the
rights of those mentioned here, and I am not sure how you protect some
types of people (like juniors) to the fullest without taking away
rights from others. In fact, on these very committees, our collegiate
chess club was discussed, since we allowed, at the time, local juniors
to participate - which led to more than one problematic situation.
These situations must "bleed" into scholastic chess, especially at the
high school level.

So again, I would have liked to seen that discussed (it seems relevant
to my ignorant and uninformed brain), but again, you have deemed my
ideas as unfit, and you must be right. I can't be informed on any of
this because you have deemed it so.

But again, you have shown the way. Only the wise may speak, and you
have deemed me unwise, unfit for the discussion, and a danger to
scholastic chess, along with hordes of unnamed USCF members. I suppose
since your chorus of one says so, it must be true.