I disagree. Any discussion that involves a personal attack is useless. It's not going anywhere. Name calling is just one symptom of the issue.
My point stands, few come here for information, they seek justification, or to make accusations. This place is at it's very best, a shouting society. I'm ok with that as it's what I expect.
I have to go with Bowfinger's formulation of "Polite misinformation is far less useful than impolite, but informed, honest discussion." First off, "polite misinformation" can be quite a bit more dangerous than impolite misinformation.
Most importantly, I recall arguing in that thread over the vote on banning name calling that the insults were a symptom of the underlying problem of intellectual dishonesty. I objected to addressing the symptom without addressing the root cause.
When someone is intellectually dishonest - for example, mischaracterizing the opposing argument or making unsourced factual claims and not providing a source when asked - then insults are inevitable. Either the intellectually dishonest party, when confronted with arguments he can't refute, will resort to name calling to distract from the weakness of his argument; or he will persist so long being intellectually dishonest that eventually his opponent will make insults to shame him because rational arguments have proven ineffective.
There are possibly workable forum rules which could improve the quantity of argumentation to some degree. Perhaps they would work, perhaps not. But if not, then I can't abide banning the insults because quite honestly at times an insult is a legitimate response. Which is not to say that all insults are called for. Probably a majority are not. But the insults are a second order problem. The first order is can anything useful ever come of these kinds of exchanges if all people are doing is selling propaganda to help the home team win. It is plainly obvious that polite bullshit is utterly useless at best, misleading at worst.