[ixtli]

I agree that they are more structured, but I don't see any evidence that this is in any way due to how immediately people are attacked for wording things strongly.

Engineering is a life and death business more often than people think; it deserves people who feel strongly about it.

As an aside, I think the rules about trolling and personal attacks are pretty clear and easy to enforce. What I'm specifically concerned about is that those rules are evoked outside of the spirit in which they were created to attack emphasis in general. In fact, most of the discussion here is in clear violation of "Please avoid introducing classic flamewar topics unless you have something genuinely new to say about them." but obviously we rightly care a lot about this topic and, since people are acting like adults, no one needs to tap on the poster so to speak.

[lemmings19]

It looks like we agree that attacks are not helpful, but freedom of expression can be.

I appreciate that the majority of people in this forum express their opinions in a highly productive manner void of animosity, as you've just demonstrated. The previous's user's remark "Worst argument so far." did not convey this spirit. Whether intentionally or not, antipathy and pure negativity do not bring out the best of people in online forums. It is my hope that those are two things which this community seeks to discourage, but not all freedom of expression. This is how I interpreted the comment which sparked your initial response.