My own view is that allowing more heated debate would be damaging. There used to be a subforum here, I think it was "Complaint and Debate". The idea, if I recall correctly, was that this area was less moderated and people could let off steam in there., so there was a lot of heated debate.

Unfortunately, people being what they are, the battle lines drawn up in there then affected how people interacted with each other across the rest of Renderosity. In addition some people like an audience, so they still kicked off arguments in the more popular subforums, where the biggest audience was.