Straight personal insults are not a good way of conducting arguments. But anyone who throws round word like "fascist" (except when they are using them accurately, which they normally aren't, and which MAV definitely was not) is inviting it.

I think it's better however to ignore the personal abuse, and to ignore the people who get it going. If that means their arguments get ignored, tough. (Not that I saw any that seemed to have much weight.)

Retuning is fine if you're playing on your own and there's no hurry. But it's no good in the middle of a tune. I suppose you could have soem kind of Scruggs tuning pegs - has anyone ever experimented with using these on guitars?