I've read many people opine on the place that the internet--and in particular, discussion fora--should have in an Orthodox Christian's life. Mostly, the reaction is negative, which is I suppose understandable given the unedifying, needlessly polemical, and totally mindless rhetoric on some Orthodox lists and fora (including this one... I participate here, after all! 
). But, I don't want to get into the negative in this post, so on that point I'll only note that in "real life" similar things happen, like the Greek Orthodox fellow who got his nose broken recently after Liturgy.
For me, the internet, including discussion boards, seem like very good things. One of the main reasons I left Protestantism was my email and forum discussions with a certain Protestant student attending Baylor. I eventually found out about Orthodoxy on the internet. Much of my early studying and contact with Orthodox Christians came about via the internet. Some people pointed out my flawed methodology (in the way I was approaching Orthodoxy) via email. Later (and to this day), people are still kind enough to contact me and tell me when I am making a fool of myself and letting my pride show with full colors. It is on the internet--an Orthodox email list--that I met the woman who is now my wife. It was in an Orthodox chat room that I asked her out on our first date. It was on the internet that the proposal for marriage was offered (at the time I lived about 90 miles away and drove to see her when I could--this may seem unrelated to the topic at hand, but I believe that beside entering the Church, marriage to a true Orthodox Christian is probably the most profound step a person can take in their life, and that step was taken by Mary and I online, as scandalous as that might seem).
I've learned countless things on the internet; many times I've learnt how very wrong I was and am. I sometimes pull up old posts or articles of mine written years ago, or even months ago, during a Google search, and just shake my head at the pride, arrogance, ignorance, or whatever else I see in them. Again, many people have been kind enough to point this out to me as well, including the late Fr. Averky of Jordanville... who corrected me via email. I learnt about ROCOR, and "traditionalism" in general, online. Some people would say that that's a bad thing, I guess It is through online discussions that I saw that I needed to stay put (in ROCOR) for now, and just try to live my life in Christ with my wife. I'll mention that people on the internet who I told this too were far kinder to me than I was to some of them when they had made similar decisions. To this day, fellows like Anastasios, Dn. Nicholas, Seraphim Reeves, and OrthodoxOrDeath put me to shame by their Orthodox conduct. There is much that is unedifying on the internet... but there is also certainly much that is good.
Having said all of this... for the past couple years, my wife and I have taken a few months off from the net towards the end of the year. Admittedly, the last two years it was because of circumstances which were, for the most part, out of our hands. Nonetheless, I think it is a good practice to continue, so while some people leave off internet discussions for the Lenten season, my wife and I are going to leave off at this point, going into Nativity. I actually meant to cut my posts drastically months ago, and started out ok, but things have declined quite a bit since then. So, this will be the time to start anew with my intentions. [shameless plug] The only online time will be adding things to our website.[/shameless plug] I hope none of this was too personal... I'm of the opinion that if we knew more about each other we'd be less likely to make knee-jerk posts and slam each other (but that's another topic).
In Christ,
Justin and Mary
