You've expressed my feelings exactly. If one can simply downvote a bad opinion and move on when one doesn't have time or perhaps links handy to debunk it you have a civil situation where one uses such signaling mechanisms to show incorrectness.

When one can't, there's anger, frustration and once you open that reply box and start typing it's easy not to stop, there is a tendency among many with contentious topics to go off, to get angry, to say things that don't really help the situation, that are vicious, petty, cruel, even perhaps dangerous as I've seen people here who've made statements that might not be first amendment protected on the grounds of "real threats". It becomes instead of a nice civil "suppress/disagree with button" situation a "how can I shut this person down with words, how can I hurt them, how can I silence them" situation. That or just spamming low effort emotes which has the same sentiment problem and clogs up threads (and wastes scrolling time) with lots of redundant and low effort, low value reaction content.

I think overall it decreases quality and frankly I really, really, really do not want this place to turn into hexbear. They have decent politics but they really are as abrasive as scotch pads and as able to maintain being serious for more than a minute as Mel Brooks (not at all).

I am truly thankful Maud'Dibber is so sensible on this.