@36: not to discount your point of view as a long-standing member, but actually, no, I personally don't think you appreciate the scope of the problem.
This forum has, in recent times, simply been beset by pointless, baseless carping of which the recent posts had been good examples. If that is the type of forum you feel you want to inhabit or tolerate, that's fair enough, but I am saying that it isn't what I think this forum is capable of, nor the kind of forum I want to continue to help reform and run. I know this because I was on this forum doing active mod duties, not three years ago, where the nonsense we've seen in the past year and a half or so was, if it ever happened at all, usually restricted to very extreme differences in opinion or misunderstanding, rather than completely meritless paint-balling. The quality of the reports we've received in the last year or so especially have usually been of a kind calculated to inspire resignation and sadness, and yes if that sounds like pessimism, I claim my prize. Even before I was a mod, looking in from the outside, I can honestly say that I was even eager to receive help from the mod team when things went off the rails, which they rarely did, and I took up the offer glad to help when I was offered the chance to be on the team. This, I am sure, was only possible because people and the mods all held one another in high regard and mutual respect. No, I never expected moderation to be easy, but I also never expected to see quite so much wilful animus either, and I've been frankly surprised by how much bad behaviour has been brushed under the carpet as mere caper or open expression of opinions or free speech.
To use your example, calling someone (even a popular someone) a piece of shit isn't the behaviour I think we ought to except from forum members. Maybe you can call their work, or their talents, or whatever, a piece of shit, taking care of course to remind people that this is your own opinion, but not that someone directly is a piece of shit. Of course there is scope and leeway for what's permissible, for instance calling someone a piece of shit because they hold what you believe are irredeemable views might be understood as a criticism of their qualities as a human being, but in no case is simple out-and-out (and, it goes without saying, very un-funny) mud-slinging something that we'd normally tolerate.
Of course there are disagreements, and of course there are controversies. And yes, some people will come on with the aim of stirring shit up. You've been on this forum longer than I have, so I'm sure you've seen them. What hasn't been apparent, I'm quite sure, is simply the level of hostility that has been tolerated and deemed acceptable. I can only speculate as to the reasons, but I think a combination of political changes and general partisanship, as well as, in no small part, the paralysis of the moderation team, which I do believe is the main reason this forum is distinct from all the other open-air forums we've seen descend into chaos, are the chief problems. We need as mods to decide what vision we want for the forum, and bring it about. Don't get me wrong, even now it is still not an unfriendly place. It gives me great pleasure to see all the new topics spring up, new members appear, and yes, controversial topics like this one eventually die down, but that does not change the fact that we are at the point of deciding what kind of behaviour we ought to tolerate, and there is clearly a push for the style of discussion that is tolerated elsewhere going on. Maybe that's just the way it is, and as I said, if that's the turn we're taking, I don't want to stick around as a mod. I'd like the bar of civility to rise to the point it has been in the past, at least, so that we can get back to discussing the issues, and not the members.
Hope this clarifies.
Just myself, as usual.