I agree, if we only had more level headed posters like you this place would be a lot better off.

That, ahem, being said... It's clearly a moderation failure to some great degree. There are plenty of higher traffic forums than this that maintain a much higher S/N ratio. You can think laissez faire works great for economics, but it's a clear proven failure for forums. A little moderation goes a long way, there has to be a broken window theory type process going on here where people see mayhem and shit S/N and decide to contribute to it because obviously nobody cares about the forums very much.

I mean really, there are obvious trolls (no offense imperi), pyramid schemes, rehashed flame wars and hucksters all over the main subforums. Spend a few days with a real editorial policy and suddenly there'd be a lot less of that going on to have to moderate. It seems the main problem is that the moderators are mostly just checked out, maybe nobody's really in charge or they've moved on to greener pastures.