I kind of missed the point of the thread when I last posted. That was (I guess) to speak up about the forums. I'm not put off at all by the flame wars.
I used to visit sci.geo.satellite-nav. Every so often one of these personality disputes would break out with the same general topics you see here (too much / too little control, he said .. she said..). I learned who the hot button people were and avoided their threads. If it got too bad, I'd tune out for a month or so.
It's just human nature. Newsgroups are a bit like Gilligan's Island. You have professors, skippers and Gilligan's. Who are you? Smiling at you from under my white cap. -joe c-