First off, let Pete and I discuss ourselves, no need for you to butt in to my comments to him and vice versa. We're both big boys and can handle ourselves, I assure you.
I don't like the memes non-stop in good threads either. We should have a few threads dedicated to the humor of such and have them posted there, not as news article posts or responses.
And the tolerance - yeps. Folks should either have tolerance and respond as humans, or utilize the ignore function. Been saying so for years and years, but no one listens. And if folks think things are somehow "different" here, they aren't. Do folks feel if they go to other boards like usmb, jpp, DA, DU or any other board with more than 1k posts - that they won't be littered with fighting, insults and arguments? I know it sucks, but that's what politics does to people, again, nature of the beast. It's not something that DP has a trademark on, it's something that "humans" have trademarked - and that's usually their freedom of speech, which will often lead to harsh disagreements on politics. In fact, I would say that most other places are much much worse, and come with worse moderating as well.
We definitely moderate little here, and can do better on some subjects. But it's up to the community. And if folks DID have more tolerance, less personal comments and/or just ignored the riff raff.... but folks here and elsewhere have ALWAYS chosen the negative route of speaking their minds, whenever. And yet everyone also complains about the smallest changes in how the place is moderated. I prefer to let folks choose for themselves, while offering quite a few ways to easily make the place at least a little better for themselves. Most don't bother with such options.
Finances it is not. I know folks have been MORE than gracious to DP over the years, but the majority of the time I have no issue at all footing the bill. I NEVER complain about such and never will.
If I knew of a magic wand to be able to advertise and get tons of members, and most being 'nice' people, I would do so. Hell, I can't even get many asses to come join. Maybe I'm wrong for this.