No, the IGS spirals around itself and never reaches any sort of conclusion because none of the people involved are willing to concede anything. Period. It's a forum full of pundits, which is why that whole "The back and forth, is it really fun?" thread exists, and why I, and many others, largely ignore the whole damn thing.
OOC isn't going to change anything, especially since there's no
reason for it. Players don't need to "quickly plan out any sort of information exchange", that's not exactly
dynamic, and isn't that part of the point of RP?
If you don't feel "OOC" is acceptable, then use other options, they're all available.
1. Send an evemail.
2. Open a private convo.
3. CREATE ANOTHER OOC CHANNEL AND INVITE EVERYONE INTO IT YOU REGULARLY WOULD WANT TO COMMUNICATE WITH OOC
4. Don't fucking bother with the OOC
because it isn't necessary at all.
This:
I can say from spending a lot of time in SynePublic and Syne Intel, where the brackets are allowed in moderation, that they're not abused except in very rare situations.
Is a microscopic test case that offers no statistical validity. I could alternatively state that 16 years of RPing online in various RP venues has shown that your examples
are the very rare situations, and not otherwise. Using a much large test case, and with a slightly larger statistical validity to it, but that still falls to the same illogical argument.
The argument I
would make is that the majority of people tend to agree with that viewpoint because it
also matches
their experiences. And that is a far greater test case.