[user104658]

Originally Posted by Ammi

..I agree, I think many of us want that/it's the whole interesting part of discussion/debate but that can only happen..(imho of course....)...if things are actually discussed with respect and if people themselves aren't mocked...otherwise the person who is mocking is the one closing the discussion/debate down and making it less likely for any future thread participation...

I'll tentatively agree that mocking can start to go too far... but I think it's fairly obvious that I personally like my discussions to be a little heated, and to involve a little bit of pigtail-pulling on both sides. I honestly believe that the most interesting and revealing opinions don't even start to come out until a little bit of the guard has been dropped. The challenge is finding the sweet spot between guards being dropped, and defenses going up .

Just a thought though - if thread participation is inversely proportional to level of mockery... how do you explain this thread having 27 pages?