I've been to teamliquid.net, gosugamers.net, pgtour.net, and even wgtour.com's forums. The people in their "other" categories seem to act as one big happy family. And then when I look at our "other" categories, it seems almost the opposite. Why? Well I was checking out the types of topics that were being made there and none of them were really really serious/sensitive discussions (like politics, religion, etc.)
I believe our SD forum has become way beyond what Yoshi had intended it to be like. When it comes down to politics, religion, etc, things can get really touchy especially when ideals, morals, beliefs start to conflict. I believe it's politics and current events which is causing the most hostile tension between members on SEN. The Null section and the Lite Discussion threads don't have this problem because they aren't over such serious, grown-up issues. The SD is pretty much what's setting thick barriers between members of different beliefs.
So really, I believe something has to be done with this forum. We can't just simply enforce a strict "No flaming" rule because eventually, people are going to end up losing their temper as their beliefs would constantly get poked at.
As for me, here are two options I, myself, would think is great:
1) Delete the SD permanently
or better yet:
2) Combine the LD and SD forums, just by calling it lite discussion or something, so then there would be less emphasis on making/participating in topics that deal with serious issues.
Yeah, you might have a point that the SD forum isn't geared towards majority of the site's users.
I've got a third solution though... I think SD might deserve its own set of rules to add on to what's already there in order to enhance discussion.