Personally I find the speed with which personal attacks or petty arguments happen on a lot of threads vey depressing. Within the blink of an eye, what I hoped would be a good aviation related conversation, descends in to a childish argument or slanging match. For that reason I often think better of participating.
Strangely (given we like to think we're laid back), this appears to be a lot worse on the Aus forums than elsewhere on Prune.
Concur. On a thread elsewhere on this site I remonstrated with a couple of individuals who had descended into personal abuse and was basically told to get back in my box; Who was I to say that personal abuse was not acceptable etc etc.
we no longer have a Forum where both sides can a rational discussion about aviation- it quickly spirals into vicious name calling with people being called "bigot/ racist etc etc", or else people who have zero aviation experience-
Unfortunately it has been like this for quite some time now. And sadly, I think it won't improve either.