While the drama is disturbing and upsetting, it is important in a community to have open communication, yes, even with warts and all.
Sometimes moderators are too quick to close a thread or end a debate when things get heated, and to me that doesn't help. It only creates festers and simmering wounds. Sometimes you need to shout and scream and kick. Right? Righteous anger and all that? When mods constantly remind people, "Play nice, speak nice" then sometimes you just get versions of plastic people, like at the KH, all talking nice with smiles on their faces, everybody hiding their real feelings. I am not advocating ad hominem attacks or out and out abuse of any member, but sometimes people need to let off steam and say things.
It may get ugly, but I appreciate a forum where the moderator/forum owner is reasonable in this regard and not so quick to shut everybody up and silence each person's voice. We have certainly had enough of that from the bOrganization!!
It seems to me that, as former JWs, we are not used to conflict. We are used to surface niceness and fake smiles. All get along under an umbrella of insincerity. Stuff is never dealt with, unless you constantly run to the elders, and we never learn how to really stand up for ourselves without being made to feel that we are somehow "bad" for doing so.
...
Having said that, I do feel that Simon makes an extremely valid point in saying, "I honestly do think that it's something in the exJW psyche that they are still working out in their head but some people just flip and can't be reasoned with. Obsession takes over and it becomes about payback, revenge or whatever. Maybe the forum does becomes a substitute for the WTS and so I become the target for being the authority on it. Who knows, it's a nice theory if nothing else but I'm no shrink."
It seems like some exJWs, especially those who were raised in the religion/cult, have damage. Men have been taught (from infancy, ha!) that they are superior, yet they are stifled in any personal achievements or goals, unless those goals or achievements further the advancement of the WTS's agenda. As JWs, we are constantly bombarded with how we should be, how we are never good enough, doing enough, etc. and blah blah blah. I think this can create a personality disorder, a prickly personality with ego problems and even "ego dissonance".
But I also agree with the thought about love covering a multitude of sins, about love being patient and kind... all that good mushy stuff we try to apply in our dealings with people, friends and family....
So we may fight and argue at times, sometimes with very valid reasons, but remembering each others difficulties and issues and any resultant psychological damage that may have been inflicted from our bOrg experience or other life experience.