[EricBurnett]

Yes, they certainly do. In the TGIF presentation itself there isn't too much back-and-forth (although the panel members may have different opinions), but people will discuss it themselves after. For something as big as the China issue, it was probably discussed in some other channel(s) as well.

As far as email lists go, the discussions can get quite lively, although I wouldn't generally call them flame wars - civility still holds in general. But they can definitely get long; the term centithread gets thrown around a lot. When I was there one of the longest I saw was about people putting open chocolate milk back in the fridge, and whether or not that was a terrible thing to do :p..