It occurs to me that some of those who most claim to wish this forum were unmoderated would have considerably less fun prodding us all with sticks if that were, in fact, true.

I was mistaken about the abovementioned possibly-unmoderated forum. It is moderated. I'm not really surprised. It and this one are still less moderated than anything else in which I'm involved on the Internet. I'm on a couple of hobby forums, too, none of which would tolerate half the mud that's slung around here, and they all seem to function just fine. The people that bitch the most about being ostracized are invariably the ones who kick up the most sand in the first place.