Altebrilas:

orthohawk:

And for Esperanto to be practically useful, it has to be embraced by people of all sorts.

And that will never happen as long as those who are already in the Esperanto movement are nasty and bitchy to those who do not share their political, religious, and lifestyle viewpoints.

How to convince those who are in the Esperanto movement to debate with those who do not share their political, religious, and lifestyle viewpoints instead of ignoring or insulting them? That is what Esperanto was created for, isn't it?

Civil debate is one thing. Gratuitous insults and general hatefulness not to mention outright hostility are quite another.

Have you often seen esperantists who behave that way toward people outside the movement?

Inappropriate and impolite language seems to be particularly predominant in the inter net since some people feel that a non-face-to-face conversation allows them freedoms in breaching constructive discourse. This is NOT Esperanto-specific. There is a colleague of mine, with whom I once had very enjoyable conversations, who went on a rampage and starting ranting and insulting me when my dissertation appeared because I quoted sources supporting the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis of linguistic relativity. It is really a shame since I sincerely enjoyed his comments even if I didn't always agree. People who disagree with me tend to make me think and rethink what I am writing and often lead me to new cognition and even though my newer insight may still not be 100% aligned with theirs, they do change my thoughts and reasoning. I am grateful for constructive dissenting opinions - but due to the somewhat impersonal format of online writing some take offense and explode.

@Robb
Politeness has taken centuries to be in the state it is today in "civilized" countries. But if the conditions are changing (like introduction of the internet), everything has to be rebuilt from zero, because people need to receive some signals (words, smiles, gestures, etc.) from other people to trust them, and if they do not get those signals, they do not feel secure and get agressive.

I thought naively that words were enough to explain between each other in case of misunderstanding, especially in the esperanto movement, but in fact, things are much more complicated ...