It's really hard to say to what degree I've been swayed by specific posts or posters here. Pretty much everything I hear and read, including this forum and the dash site before it, has some kind of influence on me and my worldview whether it ends up changing my worldview or not. For me, changing my views on things isn't something that occurs immediately, but over a course of months. I need to read as much as possible on a subject before I really start to adopt any particular idea or adapt it according to my own thoughts on it. Then once I've read more, I can also go back and reread a post.
The thing for me when I post here or on other forums, isn't that I'm actually trying to change other people's opinions in most cases. In most cases, it's highly unlikely that one single individual is every going to change another's opinion. In many respects, posting here in topics that I feel particularly strongly about is a way for me to better explore my own ideas, experiment with structuring my arguments, and to test any particular weaknesses my arguments might have. When it comes to ideas, for me, it's really important to consider all angles. For me, something isn't worth adopting as a value/idea if it is easily dismantled. It also helps me think of new ways to express those arguments better.
Overall, my views on a number of issues has changed a lot over the course of my life. If I look at who I was when I was politically and ideologically at 16 versus where I'm at now at 26 I might as well be an entirely different person in many respects. I expect to be just as different at 36, if not moreso
But even in the short time that I've been on this forum specifically, there are some things that have changed quite a bit for me. When I look at how I viewed femmes a few years ago, or even when I first went to the dash site, I had a far more rigid view of gender and even sexuality. That part of me has done a complete 180 at this point, and I hold almost the complete opposite of what I did then when it comes to gender and sexuality. In many respects I've gone from really placing emphasis on my attraction to the masculinity vs. femininity perspective of the dynamic, to really coming to think of gender as irrelevant for the way I view myself within the dynamic. Through the various posts of femmes on this site, the dash site, irl and book/blog recommendations in general I've definitely come to understand femmes and even the bf dynamic itself much differently than I used to. Because of femmes sharing the different ways of being femme, I've definitely shed a lot of the underlying sexist assumptions I used to have.
I've also learned a lot on this forum about the age play community. With age play in particular, there were certain aspects of it that used to disturb me when I first encountered it in hetero porn in my teens. When I came to the dash site I still didn't really know what to make of it, but there have been some really great threads on this forum on the subject that have really changed my thinking on it. I really thank all those who had the patience to discuss the subject despite that it can be a sensitive subject. Even though I never really participated in those threads, I enjoyed reading them and learned a lot anyways.
Body size issues is another topic I've really enjoyed reading about on this forum, and it definitely has made me question a lot of things that I didn't think to question before. I know there was a thread recently that really introduced me to something I'd never really thought about before, which was gatekeeping that occurs even in communities that are supposed to be body/size-positive (who is big enough to be considered a part of the community and who is not, was a form of gatekeeping that that particular thread was trying to discuss as present and problematic, if I remember right).
And of course, just from discussing gender issues here with transfolks has really changed my own perspective on the utility (for me) of the word "trans" itself. Before I used to not want to use the word to describe myself, but have come to see it as a politically important word when it comes to the fight for trans equality. Reading some of the posters on this site did impact that shift, as well as speaking to more and more diverse trans folks irl. I guess that's how it's been for me. Really a combination of what I experience irl and what I read here and elsewhere online.
That said, no matter how passionate I am about some issue, I try to not to have any "core beliefs" that are such "core beliefs" that they are completely immutable. All the ideas and beliefs I have, I feel should be mutable, since anything else would imply that I have all the answers on something...which I evidently don't. On the other hand, of course there are some topics that hit closer to home than others, and sometimes it becomes a struggle not to let that show when posting. I know I feel this way about trans issues, simply because I feel that a lot of issues that come up reflect issues I face in life and have negative consequences on myself and other trans folks in my life. In that respect, my views on how "different opinions" really become a brutal reality has changed quite a bit. For me, it's made me more prudent when discussing potentially sensitive topics involving marginalized peoples, because what is simply an "opinion" for me is somebody else's daily experience.
I also feel this way when it comes to body sovereignty rights, whether it comes to trans folks, women's reproductive rights (rights to abortion and hysterectomies at any age f.ex.), euthanasia, disability rights and what I view as the government's responsibility in providing people with what they need when it comes to their own bodies no matter who they are and what they've done, really gets to me. I suppose those might be a part of what I view as a part of my "core beliefs/values." I'm not sure I could ever accept people trying to justify policing others' bodies.