Does it have to be this way?

Perhaps it's always been like this, but I can't help feeling that the dialogue around SF&F has in recent years grown increasingly toxic and counter-productive. It may well have been just the same in the old days of mimeographed fanzines and letters columns - feuds run long and deep in literary circles - but there's no doubt that the nature of online discussion has raised the temperature, enabling flamewars and "fails" to flare up with numbing regularity. If they burned out as quickly as t...