Maybe I missed some forum history here. But
this and
that made me think of the time when I (mostly wrongly) associated SF with snobbish aloofness.
Snobbish aloofness - sounds like an apt description to me...
My point is, that on both Forums the "residents" become rude when newcomers try to impose their contrasting worldview on everybody. The main difference between the Forums is in the type of messages that will make people explode. You can have a hard time on SF if you do not express your view in a "scholarly" fashion, and you can have an equally hard time on ST if you are too PC (see the recent "Japisode"). On both Forums, you can have a hard time if your views, your language, your overall set-up is too much out of the local norm (SF recently had a 15-year old guy who was at least one beer short of a six-pack, but otherwise was completely harmless, and still I feel slightly embarrassed of kicking him out in no time; ST Forum in its infancy had that infamous "Buck" who might have just been a regular guy with massive language problems and a view of sumo that simply didn't toe the party-line).