Forum debates though can sometimes be a bit of a high-wire walk - the line between disagreeing with someone and being perceived as confrontational is a thin one. That's not to say (intellectual) confrontation is a bad thing - the most boring communities are those where there is no intellectual confrontation. Political cartoonists and satirists are confrontational by nature, and it worries me when people/groups try to silence them. Guess it depends what the motive for disagreeing or confronting is; if the motive is just to stir up trouble then it's unacceptable. If the motive is to get things out in the open and discussed then it's acceptable. Perhaps Forum etiquette should be just the same as the etiquette we try to follow when entering any new social group; introduce ourselves, get to know who's who, and the general feel of the place, then start to contribute, debate and, yes, even confront.
It's stating the obvious, but the more that members get to know each other the more unlikely misunderstandings will arise. The hilarious leg-pulling over Goff's emergence from Rillaton Barrow is an example of that, and again shows TMA more in the light of a community than of a clique. Personally I like TMA the way it is, there's a nice crossover of ideas without having sub-categories that some of us might not actually bother with (and that would be a pity). There's also a lot of fantastic information and humour on TMA - one minute you can be saying to yourself wow didn't know that, or look at that fantastic photo, and the next thing you can be rolling around on the floor :-)
