I agree, a little bit of light ribbing is both entertaining to read and makes writing posts fun. I don’t want to see a totally sterile environment develop here:
Well, Sir. The Right Honourable Gentleman is of course entitled to his opinion.
I don’t think Percy wants that either. That’s why I used the word ‘spice’ in my original post — I think I remember Admin using it in a previous discussion. The point (I hope) of the new system of ‘zero tolerance’ is to stop the posts that are
nothing but needle and inevitably develop into unseemly slanging matches. It does seem to have had some success in this area, and people seem to think twice now before posting — although I might be mistaken.
The point I was trying to make was that a little leeway should be given, and that really hard and fast rules can result in farce. The point of view of the admin staff at the moment seems to be fairly inflexible: Personal Attack: Bad, Attack on the Argument: Good. My personal opinion is that it should be more to do with context.
I don’t really see the fundamental difference between You seem to like making things up, and ID seems to like making things up, and either way I don’t see much offense in them. Similarly, I don’t see the difference between That argument is Idiotic!! and You’re an Idiot!!, both of which would annoy me quite a bit.