It seems to me that apart from there being a lack of any real consensus on what types, IEs, dichotomies etc are, people treat what socionics is - how it's defined - as something to be taken for granted. Between all the discussions about "jeans vs cargos, type related?," or Gilly's 100,000th "type me" thread, there's practically no discussion about what it is we're actually talking about; meaning, where all of our patterns of thought about the matter actually begin.
So I'll start off at point 1: what is socionics? In as precise and concise a way as possible, describe what socionics is (to the best of your understanding), what it defines, etc etc etc. This could sound like a pointless mode of conversation, but I would like to see what everybody has to say on the matter.