There's a pretty good level of rational discussion here, better than in most online fora I know of.

Some people are pretty trigger-happy with the downvotes (and some get so worked up over political disagreements that they will go back and downvote many random unrelated comments of yours from the past -- but that's near-universally agreed to be bad and tends to get them banned eventually) but nowhere's perfect. And I think the majority of downvotes are genuinely deserved, though I can't see how anything in this thread deserves them.