[chao-]

I have always felt that "center" was less a matter of the specific opinion positions* , and more a matter of the style of discourse, or the degree of nuance presented about the varying opinions for a particular topic. That may be just my personal feeling on the word, but I have had people agree with it over the years.

*Though obviously extremes can be identified, e.g. advocating violence against $GROUP_NAME is not especially "center" in the current US context.

[cocacola1]

Interesting. I'm trying to picture that, but I'm not sure if I can. To me, that sounds more like how people arrive at a position rather than the position itself. Or, how someone comes to the content of their opinion as opposed to where on the spectrum that opinion might be.

[chao-]

So I am using the word "center" instead of "moderate" intentionally, because the latter might not exist--at least not in the way the common use of the word "moderate" suggests. There is some research (will dig up and edit this post if I can find it) that demonstrates how most moderates do not exist in the way we imagine. The study I am thinking of explains how surveys often use naive averaging on a single axis for policy preferences, and wind up labeling people with a mixture of extreme views as moderate. Meanwhile, those individuals are anything but moderate on any single, specific issue.

Instead of "moderate", what makes someone "centrist" to me is when someone is the opposite of "dogmatic", when someone has an ability to look at the other side and see how a logical path can be walked to reach another conclusion (than their own). Even if that person does not agree with the specific conclusion, they can follow the "stack trace". And what this understanding gives them, what this ability to reason about the other side gives them, is the necessary preconditions for compromise.

That is center to me: ability to compromise. Opinions are not center. People are center, or centrist, if they possess the disposition and non-dogmatic stance necessary for compromise. Barring revolutionary upheaval, every opinion needs to be implemented in policy eventually, and policy details involve compromise more often than not.

Maybe I am splitting linguistic hairs, but that is how I hear the word "center": a place where people with a level of understanding can come together and compromise. Compromise, famously, being an arrangement where neither side fully gets what they want.

EDIT: Found the paper, and if you want a TL;DR look at Table 1: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.685...

[SmellyGeekBoy]

The BBC comes to mind, although they're not a perfect example. They have a mandate to present both sides of an argument (hence Nigel Farage got so much airtime in the run-up to the EU referendum).

That said, ask anyone in the UK and they'll always tell you that the BBC is "biased" against one group or another, so the way they actually present those arguments varies. But at least they get a mention.