Those who clearly understand their subject of expertise stand out as a cleary beacon flashing their wisdom to all. Once upon a time here on Free Republic we enjoyed many of those ilk. Not today, you are easy to pick out from the crowd.
To be fair, even though I understand the subject and can usually put the pieces together the right way, I make plenty of errors. I like to think that if I have a skill that makes my presentation stand out, it is nothing more than stringing words together so they say what I mean, in a way that most people will understand. I also prefer to find out, in argument, what exactly the differences are. It's often the case that what looks like disagreement on the surface, is really only a difference on a detail that doesn't affect the outcome. I'm also not much invested in my opinions, at least not here, because no consequence attaches to being shown wrong.
FR and pretty much any chatroom (even the supposed highbrow ones) have an awful lot of noise, and precious little signal. That's just the way it is. I try to minimize my contribution to the noise part.
Thanks again for your amplified compliment. Now I have to go get a bigger hat ;-)