Well, I owe you a response, but my thoughts moved on from that conversation a long while ago!
I recall at the time that I started writing a critique of Habermassian consensus, then canned it. Putting too much energy into discussions that don't come to fruitition is beyond me now.
Bottom line is that we have the founding principles on which the forum is built, and firstmost of those is that it is not a democracy, let alone a 'transparent' one.
The philosophical and practical discussions of transparency in governance is an interesting one though - some time in the future I might get inspired to share my views.
Oh - look out for Cog. He's a tricky one.
