The16types.info¶
the16types.info has housed since September 2004 a popular English-language socionics forum, it hosts a number of translated socionics articles and actively works on translating and discussing new articles. It was originally administrated by Jimmy Cartrette, but in July 2006 was bought by forum member Reuben McNew, who subsequently became its administrator. It is currently operate by He Mu, aka point. He also hosts and maintains wikisocion.org.
the16types.info is not really a school of socionics, but its role in the development thereof has certainly been significant, as the present state of socionics understanding in the west, and its most active enthusiasts, for the moment can be best followed in that forum.
Background and development¶
the16types.info was originally conceived by its creator as a website to discuss his suggestion that socionics and Oldham styles were closely related. It seems that he lost interest in the site due to the general lack of enthusiasm for that suggestion. Hence the site is still called “a socionics and Oldham theory site”, and has old pages where Oldham and socionics type descriptions are put together. Although it is made clear which parts refer to socionics and which to Oldham, that has led to frequent initial mistypings by those who do not realize the distinction, or who assume that the correlation is generally accepted. That can easily lead to an SLE identifying best with the SLI section, for example.
In the beginning the site was heavily influenced by socionics articles and theory as per Sergei Ganin, since his site for a very long time lacked its own discussion forum, but later it has depended more on translations from Russian sources, Dmitriy Lytov’s site and the English sites of Rick DeLong as its main reference sources. Accordingly, the forum’s predominant approach to visual identification has shifted from a too uncritical reliance on the analysis of single pictures, as seemed to be supported by Sergei Ganin’s site, to an approach relying more on analysis of videos and multiple pictures, focusing more on the individual’s apparent functional use and temperament than on their facial features. Its forum discussions are also somewhat influenced by Smilexian socionics and the concept of subtypes, though still generally focused on classical socionics.
In 2011, the site was acquire by He Mu(point), the focus of the site is now to create a library of knowledge based on previous effort and facilitate discussion and research into socionics with the avaliable information in the west.