The problem with Steve, Jim, Ake, Keith, Teribus (there, I've named you) is their lack of any kind of filter. Clearly intelligent people, mostly very literate, they are unable to filter out, and ignore, anything posted by their nemeses. Their intelligence, sadly, doesn't extend to the understanding that, if you ignore a troll/flamer, he (almost invariably a he, but occasionally a she) will eventually bugger off.

Instead, they 'stonewall', throwing their own fixed, blinkered opinions back and forth, provoking further responses from 'the other side' ad infinitum (and, for the rest of us, ad nauseam). They just don't get it that the arguing interminably in thread after thread after thread serves absolutely no purpose, that they won't change each others' minds, that they can't, and won't, 'win'.

It's precisely the kind of 'Yah-boo you' behaviour that kids indulge in in school playgrounds the world over. Time the daft buggers grew up.