Inadequate? No, mostly I just read. Sometimes I’ll post when I have an opionion or something to contribute. I’ve posted a few times with good feedback. And had a few spectacular displays of drunken stupidity (I’m much better now - not nearly as pissed off at some very bad life situations).
I stay out of GD unless it’s something related to medicine. I’m just too apathetic regarding political + religious issues to debate.
I try to keep up with the MMP, but damn those guys race through. So unless someone’s posting pictures of their new pet (or HNC is posting more pictures of herself) I tend to fall off and wait for the next MMP OP.
Oddly enough, I don’t hang around in the IMHO forum. No explanation.
[ETA], I found this thread under the “New Posts” search, so don’t point out the obvious contradiction!
Shaddup, you! 
GD, and any GQ thread that ends up being like GD: ie, a lot of wonks showing off their fact retention and/or oral exam skills. I’m more of a big-picture, touchy-feely kinda guy; these discussions either make my eyes glaze over or make me wish I’d brought a briefcase full of cites.
I feel over my head in GD. Everybody I know IRL thinks of me as a serious debater or philosopher, and I get into all kinds of Great Debates everywhere I go. (It’s a little tiring, actually–everyone wants to hear my take, and sometimes at parties I just want to stumble around but I end up exhaustively detailing the arguments for and against, say, Intelligent Design.) So every once in a while I walk into GD feeling all full of smarts, make a couple posts and get torn apart by the wolves, and then I sulk away with my tail between my legs.
GQ doesn’t make me feel inadequate, but I feel out-of-place there. When someone asks me a serious question, I’m as likely to pull the answer out of my ass and then tell them I was kidding, as to give them a serious answer. (For example, I once convinced my GF at the time that she hadn’t done the heredity experiment I’d done in Bio class becaues it had only just been legalized in her home state of Georgia. She told me I was going to hell.) Anyway, I’ve pulled those shenanigans in GQ, and sensed that it was often not entirely welcome. Cecil’s and Staff Reports fora aren’t even on my radar.
Not inadequate, Cafe Society just bores me.
Great Debates goes totally over my head. I have my own opinions about some of those kinds of topics, and sometimes I’m brave enough to state them, but there’s no way I’d be able to cope with a pile-on in GD, especially if my point of view differed from the majority of those who post in there.
Even those in the minority who would argue against me are so well informed and widely read, and both succinct and verbose in the right measure, that they’d pound me into the ground and I wouldn’t have a prayer.
It can be fun to read when I see them do it to someone else, but I think I’d take it personally if it happened to me. Best I just stay out of it, I reckon.
10-4.
I don’t even think I have adequate arguments available for the things I either believe in or accept as valid. That doesn’t prevent me from having strong feelings about those things, but it does prevent me from entering arguments about them. I’m too quick to lapse into “fuck you” responses when the going gets tough, so I just refrain altogether. Besides, logic and reason rarely persuade me of anything. Propaganda and sales pitches, yes. Reason and logic, no way.
Yeah, the Pit is basically where I “know” you from. Your posts there are so intelligent, informed and reason, I actually wondered (this past week, fact) what your contribution would be like elsewhere. I actally meant I wondered aobut your not posting in Cafe and Mundane. Then again, mundane you’re not.
Amazing you started this thread when you did.
CS is the one that makes me feel inadequate, and probably for the same reason as it does monstro. My tastes in terms of art, culture, food, etc. aren’t that sophisticated. I don’t know a very large number of movies and books. As for the American TV show threads, most of the time I just don’t watch them, so I don’t have anything to say. Maybe if there’s a thread about an old Simpsons episode or something, I’ll be able to post something pertinent. But I check CS maybe only once every week or so.
I barely check MPSIMS. It doesn’t make me feel inadequate, although I agree that it does send a somewhat cliquish vibe. Still, I appreciate the purpose of this forum, and I may use it at some point.
The forums I usually check are ATMB, GQ, GD, IMHO and the Pit. Even there I don’t post much. Sometimes I can answer a question in ATMB, but in GQ I usually read the questions that catch my eye and the answers to them. (I check the math questions in hope that I may have something valuable to post, but there are better and faster mathematicians than me around here. ;)) I like GD, but a large number of threads there are about US politics, which doesn’t always interest me that much given that I’m not American, and about religion, which may be interesting but doesn’t always lend itself to debate, being as it is about faith. Still, once in a while I find a debate about something that interests me (say, Canadian politics) in which I can contribute, and I’ve even been congratulated for my contributions once or twice.
I read IMHO more often than I used to, and I tend to agree that it may well be the least threatening forum. As for the Pit, there are often interesting stories there. On the other hand, I don’t care for RO. (I wouldn’t pit it, though; I just don’t read those threads.)
The “comments” forums I don’t check very often, but they are low-activity anyway. I’ll post there if I have something to say, as in the recent Gfactor report about Smurfs.
Anyway, I tend to read a lot more than I post, and when I post I usually make it too long, which bores people (as I’m doing currently). 
GQ and GD. Their mental kung-fu in there frightens this grasshopper.
I don’t spend a lot of time in the Pit. So much vitriol, sometimes justified, but too much for me.
I am most at home in CS.
None. I have the special Karl Rove patch to Internet Explorer, which automatically edits SDMB posts so that all brilliant and witty comments made herein seem to come from me, whereas all stupid or inane remarks I post are attributed to Max Cleland.
I don’t feel inadequate on any of the fora. I’m no genius, but I’m no dummy, either. We’re all just a bunch of average joes coming here for some entertainment and enlightenment, in various ratios. I’m not really keen on GD, though, because those dudes really need to lighten the hell up. Maybe have a date once in a while. Get a little perspective. Part of what makes debating so much fun is the contrasting and contrary opinions, and they’ve pretty much beat that out of that forum. I think the Café Society dudes take their entertainment a little too seriously, too. Not all popular stuff is crap, and not all alternative stuff is gold.
The quick, funny things people post just blow my mind. I could never keep up. I’m also amazed at the depth of knowledge that people have on every topic under the sun. I really enjoy learning about things that I didn’t even know existed.
Neither of those experiences make me feel completely “inadequate”, but I think I’ve become a little more humble in the past few years, or at least more cautious about shooting my mouth off.
Odd, I tried to reply to StR, but it keeps listing the user name as Max Cleland :dubious:
I wouldn’t worry about it. My impression is that the majority of the references are to cultish-type stuff which is often pretty obscure. I probably know WAY too much about Star Trek and MAS*H, but I don’t begin to imagine that makes me sophisticated.
See now, for me, I don’t have any desire to understand the clique behavior. It just seems like more of the same thing from childhood where people want to feel like they belong to some sort of select group and exclude others. And that kind of behavior, far from being attractive to me, is actually repellant. Of course, then I catch myself using some inside joke now and then and realize what a hypocrite I am.
Oh, I forgot to mention that I think there are some really smart people here, especially in GD and GQ.
None of them make me feel inadequate. I don’t believe I’ve ever posted in GD, however, because I don’t come here to look for debates. I have enough of the debating “experience” in my real life.
I believe my posting is fairly scattered across the other forums. In terms of preference, I tend to spend most of my time browsing through GQ, the Pit, IMHO, and CS. I go to ATMB every other day or so. I don’t spend nearly as much time reading MPSIMS, and it’s probably the last forum that I read.