Bill D makes what I see as a very useful distinction - Heated discussions among friends and acquaintences can make a lively, interesting forum, but baiting and personal attacks are not productive.
The tricky thing is avoiding having the one turn into the other, and there are some people out there who do their best to try and get that to happen.
We don't want to find ourselves in situation where, just by a bit of judicious flaming, someone who wants to is able to in effect close off a topic where a useful discussion might otherwise happen.
Anyway, Joe and Pene are doing a great job in trying to contain and clean up this sort of thing, and I promise to try and avoid doing anything that makes it harder.