in part because the topic was special relativity and I have witnessed far too many fruitless online debates on the subject.

Too true. I am still getting grips on what the community is like.

My hope for the conversation was that the technical part of the problem would get solved and then we could have a juicy conversation on why one person or the other had map that mismatched the territory.

You may have over reacted, everyone does and then you did a good job recovering which is usually the most important part.