Rant alert! Rant alert! Dive, dive!
Originally posted by Tybaltus
How do you mean, self-righteous? Do you mean they always think they are right? And what makes it a rotten debate when it happens. If fills me up with some sort of anger/frustration, that allows fuel for a good debate, for me. 
later Dottie.
When people are convinced they are right, and far more importantly that everyone else is wrong and as such their opinions don't matter, or that they shouldn't disagree. It makes for an unpleasant and frustrating debate, as it almost invariably annoys someone who has opposite views, and things get nasty, more often than not ending up with the thread being closed and a good debate lost.
If not, then it ends up (usually) with people holding 2 different running debates on the same topic, where one side covers the aspects they like and the other covers what aspects they choose to look at. It also seems to be very much viewed as either/or situations, you can't, for example, say 'this makes sense, and I agree with it, and so does this, which I also agree with, but is an argument put forward by the other 'team', as such, because you're still not agreeing with one side or the other.
I can handle views in opposition to mine, but acting as though others opinions aren't valid because they disagree with your own is something that annoys me intensely, even more so since to dismiss their opinions about other peoples' opinions by saying 'you're wrong' is just as bad as dismissing other people because they disagree with you. The point in debates here is to learn about other peoples' viewpoints IMO.
I have not, thankfully, come across many people here at GB who do this, and even then not on most topics (9/11 being the most recent exception in some few cases), but it still raises my hackles, and I have to withdraw from the debate a while to stop from starting flame wars.
