Yes, and it's made worse by the fact your post will be misinterpreted for the sake of an easy comeback (that shouldn't exist in the first place). Here's an example:

'I'm not keen on the additions to *game*, although I'm willing to rethink that if it's implimented well.'

Here you are taking a neutral stance but those who have already decided you have an extreme view will ignore the neutrality:

'We all know why you're not keen on those additions. If it was on your console of choice you'd think differently.'

From that point on, no matter what you say or how many times you try to return to a point of neutrality, dozens of other posters will have agreed with the misinterpretation and you're left with two option:

Do I continue explaining my position of neutrality or do I not bother and let them think what they want? Option one tends to lead to more argument because the extremem people want to pigeon hole you, and option two leads to high fives because they believe they've 'won' something (whatever that is). I tend to opt for the latter because I have no problem in 'losing' or 'being wrong'.

Well said. So maybe it's up to each individual to invest in an argument and articulate it in a respectful way, and to ignore, whenever humanly possible, the baiting comments that tend to poison the forum?

Can we get a forum rule change so that this becomes possible for everyone even when not being called Rol? I'm constantly itching to tell people that or at least that they are being stupid, would be way easier if I could just be straight with that. Lol

I was always open to new things and games and all. Always got multiple consoles even if I was a super Sega fan back in the day I still had Nes, GB, Playstations etc... on forums I just learned to dislike fanboys more than I though possible.

I've become a lot more calm, mellow and reasonable. Then again, I've got older and wiser and experienced more so you'd expect that.

I think there's very little forum users can do to be honest. All that CAN be done is that mods like yourself could keep a close eye on conversations and consider who is trying to be deliberately incitefull and who is trying to be reasonable (but still incites). THAT is an impossible job to undertake and it would mean following every single poster in every single topic to try and understand where they 'tend' to come from (we're not always perfect).

I'll have to use a word here that will infuriate a lot of people and definitely have them looking at my less than thoughtout posts lol (the second half of that sentence will be ignored):

The real question is: How do you encourage maturity from people who have no intention of being mature?

For VGChartz in particular, it's the exact opposite.  I learned to be more moderate with my tone, less accusatory, less flame-baity, less gloating.  And that's in large part to the more reasonable and logical users on the site, who either having an valid and educated opposing viewpoint, or have no horse in the race, and offer up logical reasoned responses. 

I think there are certainly some sites, that encourage a more radicalized dialogue, but because VGChartz is more about numbers, and the discussion thereof, it kind of shifts the sites main focus away from what radicalizes many other sites.  Granted, this could entirely be how I view the site, because, I don't really come here to see reviews or social commentary from the sites writers (I have other sources for that), so I generally don't even read reviews here and thus don't really take part in those discussions.

There are certainly areas VGChartz staff could improve, though.  I think some fanbases get away with far worse than others (could just be perception, also), and I think some mods do the site a disservice, by enforcing silly rules, on the pretenses of it 'bothers' people, resulting in bans, that now leave certain community threads nearly dead (which runs counter to the claim that certain infractions, turn users off from commenting in certain community threads).

I think this site is very heavily Nintendo biased.

I could literally count the amount of Xbox fans on one hand.

I will praise something one day and bash it the next. I calls em like I sees em. In general, I'm a Nintendo guy first and foremost but I don't give anybody a free pass. The problem with being an extreme fan is that you just can't accept when your company fucks up of it they aren't the best in every area. If you can't accept that other people see things differently than you.... you might be crazy!

If everybody ignored them, they would eventually stop.  But we all know that's highly unlikely to ever happen.