I'll be the first to admit that my sense of humor works better some days than others (especially online vs. face to face). I took Karl's retort as half-sarcastic (and remarkably contained, actually).

But, you have to admit that there have been some threads that have gone so haywire that I could see how people would go away, or newbies would bail, as others have pointed out above.

Moderated forums have their own drawbacks, but the behavior tends to be far more pleasant, aka community building.

Mike