I had an interesting discussion with someone a few weeks back, this person is familiar with the farms but has never been a member. He asked if I thought the farms had an overly conservative bent, because that was his impression. I responded based on some talk I had previously had with a few kiwis: the forums is not in fact overly conservative, there are plenty of lefties here too. Rather, you get the impression that it is very right-wing because there just aren't many places online where righties can talk freely without getting censored or banned, so 1) it looks a lot more conservative than many forums you'll see and 2) they take enthusiastic advantage of the fairness they're afforded here and express themselves a lot.
Personally I'm of the opinion that authoritarian-vs-libertarian is a more important spectrum these days than left-vs-right. That might be off topic, but given that the excesses of authoritarianism are clearly governing the rule of many a forum such as SA I don't think it is.
