John Morrow posts, in part:
In retrospect, with some experience arguing against
another model as an outsider (the Forge's GNS), I
think the problem is that it really is difficult to
discuss the problems of a model or concepts that
don't fit the model well when people insist on
framing everything in terms of that model.
I think that problems with a model and concepts that don't fit the
model are two different issues.
To discuss a model intelligently, whether to point out problems or
otherwise, requires understanding the model first. If one doesn't
understand the model in the first place, any criticism is likely to
end up being irrelevant and unrelated to the model.
If one wishes to discuss concepts that don't fit into a model well,
obviously it's not going to be useful to talk to people who are only
interested in discussing things that model covers. That's not a
problem with the model; it's just different people not having common
ground for discussion.
My brief experience with The Forge and GNS bore this out. I got to
the point where I understood GNS well enough to understand that it was
a quite different model from the threefold, and I think I corrected
some people who thought it had subsumed the threefold. They weren't
really interested in discussing things unrelated to the GNS framework,
and I didn't personally find it a useful framework, so I quit posting
there. There's nothing wrong with that.
Flame wars here about the threefold, subsequent its initial
development, have generally been with people who actually claimed to
want to discuss things within the threefold, rather than wanting to
discuss things unrelated to the threefold. If they had been willing
to bring unrelated topics up, and were interested in examining them
rigorously, I think many regulars would have been happy to
participate.
Warren J. Dew
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