Your last request, not to address nuttiness, may be the answer, Alba!!

The answer can be, I think, summed neatly: the fun of the Cat rises and falls in inverse proportion to the number of ad hominem slurs posted. If you find periods when all those who posted were paying more attention to being funny, insightful, honest, comapssionate or informative than they were to be defensive or atagonistic to various viewpoints, you'll find the fun times when creative juices flowed. Sure, there were some extremely humourous putdowns but they were usually given and accepted in a spirit of banter and goofiness, not in a spirit of attack and nullify.

A