I found this wonderfully instructive article today and, given the tone of discussion at DKos at time, I felt I needed to post it immediately.
Yes the actual diary post length is short but the link provide much value towards making this a better site.
http://blog.createdebate.com/...
http://www.paulgraham.com/...
"If we're all going to be disagreeing more, we should be careful to do it well. What does it mean to disagree well? Most readers can tell the difference between mere name-calling and a carefully reasoned refutation, but I think it would help to put names on the intermediate stages. So here's an attempt at a disagreement hierarchy:"