Graham, in agreement with you. This is exactly why all members are asked to read this http://www.survivefrance.com/page/sfn-netiquette
Personally I find SFN an excellent resource for finding out all kinds of information and SFN Members are a helpful bunch immediately willing to share their experiences and lend a hand where possible. I am saddened when I see threads which turn into arguments - it's not easy for the Admin to deal with, the threads are followed, read and re-read and deciding when a thread has gone over a not so easy to determine threshold and deciding to subsequently intervene is not easy.
SFN Members (including those choosing not to contribute to the discussion) make their feelings clear about how they feel a discussion is going and SFN Admin also take this into account in an intervention.
James & Catharine do a sterling job with SFN and invest a lot of their time and energy into making it a place people want to come back to. It would be a shame if people are put off of SFN and all thats good about it because of a few threads where emotions run high and it is because of this that interventions are sometimes unfortunately necessary.