Reginald P. Smithers III wrote:

I enjoy a lively discussion, unfortunately most political discussions in
rec.boats focused on "your an a**hole", "I know you are but what am
I". The problem for rec.boats was that no on topic discussion could get
past one or two responses before it reverted to "your an a**hole", "I
know you are but what am I". Rec.boats still has Off topic discussion,
some political in nature, but at one time the cut and paste news
articles had turned rec.boats into 95% cut and paste and the "your an
a**hole", "I know you are but what am I" responses. There was one
person who would cut and paste 20-30 news article a day, and then would
actually discourage discussion by encouraging others not to respond to
the right wing excrement except to hurl insults.

Well, that's a casualty of the infoweb. Usenet used to be a valuable
resource for questions and information. You think this is bad, wander
through some of the more political blogs and see what happens there.

I've said it before and I'll say it again - most of the "flamers" here
are amateurs and bad amateurs at that.

No one can force or enforce a Newsgroup policy, but if the majority
agree that the insults are a waste of time, the quantity of silly flame
fest will decrease.

I quite agree.