Steve, if I said anything hurtful, I apologise. I think I did that already, though. What you did HURT. Getting pissed off at what people say isn't an excuse to hurt others though. Not for anybody. Compassion allows for forgiveness of the occasional times it happens though. It allows a bit of flexibility.

Martin Gibson is an entirely different animal. Look at his post above and realize 2 things: 1) he doesn't know enough about the subject of the thread to discus THAT, and 2) his insults are so general they could be aimed at anybody (and usually are - they're re-used over and over.) They AREN'T PERSONAL.

I'm not sure which bothers me more: people working a little to hard to offend others, or people working a little to hard to find reasons to be offended.

For the life of me, I can't figure out why people would CHOOSE to get upset by somebody lobbing generic, one-size-fits-all insults at them. It's just background noise. You talk to somebody with the verbal form of Tourette's, and you learn to ignore the stuff that doesn't fit the conversation, and listen for the person's message, because the other stuff just doesn't matter. As to intentional insults, I don't think the intent matters very much. It's what you want to listen for, and what you want to talk about.

Maybe one thing you should try before asking for intervention is to ignore the knot-in-your-shorts factor and just stick to the subject at hand. Just try it for a bit, and see if it works. What you're voting for is basically censoring replies, because the initial insult is a minor blip. You plan on writing these and hope that the admins clean up after you. It's not easy, avoiding that 'Submit' button sometimes, but the most sensible thing to do is not trash the joint in the first place.