Samurai vs. Spartans vs. Vikings vs. Knights

Doesn't mean anything except as an informal system of keeping track of the members that tend to be helpful. High Karma generally means a person is well respected in the forums.

Anyone can 'exalt' another member to give them +1 Karma. Likewise, anyone can 'smite' another member for poor behavior, though a person can only smite or exalt once per hour.

can we go back to the discussion of the contest..........back in page 16 i posted a nice sum up of the four factions involved; please don't let my ruined neurons die in vain.........

Okay I'm not sure where I "perpetuated the argument" or "presented base and rude comments" about anybody, but if you insist I did then perhaps I did. I recall being among the first to try to STOP the trouble, granted unsuccessfully. Sure, I might have shared a snippet or two with gunit, but I wouldn't say I perpetuated any argument or was rude during any part of it.

That aside, as it has been for a while (I was away) it seems things have come around.

Aku has presented some very valid points, and I think we can be satisfied with this. I am, anyway.

i dont think you had that much to do with the argument so im gonna karma you to gain it back

yes, let other people talk here, I might post some stuff tho

I like this thread because a lot of people contribute to support a fact or opinion and can make friends, but if someone makes one bad comment, it usually starts a big argument. But I think everybody here is cool

Quite honestly, when you talk to historians, archeologist's, and professors who specialize in these time periods every other sentence has "we don't know" in it. I will go even further and say scholars care little for the stuff we care about. Only recently have historians really started to get into war related stuff. This is because they are being financed by the History Channel. The History Channel is watched by guys like us, that is why every other show is war related. A lot of new information will be coming out over the next decade. Some of it will affirm stuff we think we know, other information will contradict current conventional wisdom. I suggest you people keep an open mind going forward. I know I plan to.

I hope you all saw the recent vid I posted where they interviewed experts who contradicted the long standing belief that historical swords were "ALL" well made. You guys think that is a big deal... thats nothing. One of the hottest debates among medieval historians is whether feudalism existed in medieval Europe. It seems to fly in the face of what is regarded as the foundation for what I understand about medieval society. None the less, experts argue against it. This is not a small group of rebels. This is a significant number of PHD professors. Quite frankly, if we don't know if feudalism existed in Europe, we don't know much. I don't think anyone will be able to advance themselves further if they don't accept our lack of knowledge in many areas.

This topic is fun to discuss and debate. No reason we can't do it respectfully. We must always talk from the position that we may be wrong or our source may be wrong. The only things we can say for certainty is what we do ourselves in an experiment. Experiments always have a limited scope that we must accept. This actually makes the experiment more useful.

We should continue this discussion in a fun, rational manor keeping in mind that you or I may be wrong.

Well put, Tsafa. Part of the problem lies with the tendancy to take it personal when some one contradicts something I state believing to be "true". I tend to take it as them calling me a liar when in reality they are just stating what they have learned to be "true".
The real truth is we are just dealing with opinions whether ours or one we got from someone else.
It also helps if I don't casually throw out personal opinions of anothers intellect while disagreeing with them.
I have found this thread to be an amusing pasttime. I don't require my fun to be the undisputed "truth".

I very much agree. If PHD's are constantly debating history, I don't expect any of us to know any better. We often point to sources, but we don't know anything about how that information was accumulated. Should we stop trying to learn, because the sources may be tainted... no way! But we must keep an open mind to other possibilities.