I remain inordinantly proud, in a shamefully geeky way, of the time I got the author of that piece to facepalm by answering a "so how do you pronounce 'drow'?" poll with "Moriquendi"...
Political forums do bring a particularly vitriolic flavor of batshit, but really I don't think there's any subject that can't degenerate into wank and insanity once it reaches a critical mass; it can just take one gadfly or unmedicated nutter to touch off a chain reaction, especially in a group that was previously sufficiently warm-and-fuzzy that the denizens have not learned to refrain from feeding trolls. I used to work for an ISP, dealing with complaints about spammers and online harassment and other general Customer Naughtiness, and one particularly groaner-worthy case had much of the readership of a figure-skating fan newsgroup reduced to shrieking bloodthirsty harpies because one of our users was SAYING MEAN, INSENSITIVE THINGS about a skater. THE HORROR!
no subject
Political forums do bring a particularly vitriolic flavor of batshit, but really I don't think there's any subject that can't degenerate into wank and insanity once it reaches a critical mass; it can just take one gadfly or unmedicated nutter to touch off a chain reaction, especially in a group that was previously sufficiently warm-and-fuzzy that the denizens have not learned to refrain from feeding trolls. I used to work for an ISP, dealing with complaints about spammers and online harassment and other general Customer Naughtiness, and one particularly groaner-worthy case had much of the readership of a figure-skating fan newsgroup reduced to shrieking bloodthirsty harpies because one of our users was SAYING MEAN, INSENSITIVE THINGS about a skater. THE HORROR!