I would offer a couple of opinions on this thread.
First, the non-technical forums are not the only place where things get spirited. A couple of cases in point - discussions from a few years ago regarding: the merits of meaningful and meaningless keys; proper meaning and use of NULL; the best way to decide that a given string is null; when it is not only acceptable but proper to not fully normalize a table; treatment of data vs. meta-data (and not talking about Access's meta data, but rather some descriptive info about a project). I could probably dredge up a few more from my admittedly feeble memory, but those are probably enough examples of spirited discussions that involved some differing and strongly-held opinions.
Second, I rather like the idea of never actually deleting a thread, but allow it to be closed - solidly as in "no more posting to it." Either by the original poster, when that person believes the problem to have been either solved or beaten to death; or by a moderator who decides that the post has taken a nasty turn.
I'm in other technical forums unrelated to access. In one of them, when you close a thread, you must post a comment with that closure - as OP or moderator. If we did forced closures when it gets too nasty, the person responsible for the nasties could at least see where s/he stepped over the line. I've seen that in actual practice and I think it is a great solution to the problem of a thread that has degenerated.
Third, as to why I don't respond to questions about the USA and barbs directed our way ... you must have confused me with someone else. Now if you are going to speak ill of Bill Clinton (who wasted good cigars) and GWB (who was not quite a total waste), I might not actually berate you for it. But there are at least a FEW things we got right - like ousting the then-repressive British government from our shores - so we could replace it with a now-repressive USA government of our own. Don't you know that it is less about the repression and more about the fact that we did it to ourselves?
Before you ask... GWB wasn't a total waste because Laura got him to throw at least SOME money at education. I consider that a positive thing. As to the other things he pushed through, like the Patriot Act, ... we could have done without that legislation. If I say more, my blood pressure will just go up again and I don't need the aggravation.
