Appears I didn't see this thread yesterday....

To avoid interminable arguments, I think there needs to be agreement between the people engaging to drop a point when its dead, or acknowledge a point as countered when it is. But the problem comes when people can't agree on the point of invalidity of an argument or just refuse to accept it, or simply don't believe in fact based argumentation at all.

From what I gather, its easier to acknowledge that a point raised on a forum isn't important, leave the discussion and come back later still using the same points without addressing criticism of those points. I support the freedom to do that, but I agree it doesn't advance the discussion. A possible solution if we want a create a topic where the posters have to agree to adhere to those rules in that topic only, but that depends entirely on people using those repetitive arguments not posting there and other people discussing not replying to posts that violate the rules.

Avoiding using an argument will depend on how strongly a person believes in that argument, and on what basis that belief is held. If it is held as valid on very strong grounds by that person, it will probably not be possible for them to not use it. And considering how closely someone believes an invalid argument, it might not be possible for them to be convinced off of believing it on a forum on the internet. The only solution to that is to ignore those arguments and focus on others.

As to newbies, I think the reason they don't get treated as well is because people suspect alts, and given the history of those on these forums and those that still use them today, I wouldn't blame them. I wouldn't want GOG to limit accounts by IP, but alts are a problem, at least how I feel. The reason I don't reply to many noobs is because I think their alts.
As to solving that problem, I heard totalbiscuit once say putting a one week limit between registration on a forum and posting help a lot. Logic being the people cool down and don't post stuff in the hear of the moment, also makes making alt accounts a longer process and worth less effort. But we have forum specific quirks, like this one's lack of moderation (which I still think is a plus more than disadvantage).

As to controlling emotions and tone, its is completely reasonable to say and easy to do, but it really can't be enforced and everyone has a breaking point after which they lose patience and scream and shout at everyone. Same with having a welcoming community. No one is obligated to be nice to anyone else on the internet, and no one is obligated to use proper pronouns or whatever.

TL;DR, it will improve the quality of discussions we can have here to control emotions and not bring up dead arguments, but it really depends on how willing people are to follow those principles. Given every debate on the internet is low risk and low reward, I don't think we can enforce it unless we have a topic with those principles as rules and voluntary posting.