Its the same all over. On my striper fishing website if you keep a fish they want to know how many you keep a year, if you keep a big fish you get crucified. On my general fishing website its similar.
What I've noticed is that on any website there develops a clique of guys who just dominate the posting and feed off one another.
Another thing I noticed is that when a politics board is opened, people sign up for that and have no interest in the general hunting/fishing theme of the website at all.
After a period of time they take there bile and cross over to the hunting/fishing threads and pollute them with their nonsense until the good members have their fill and move on.
There is one website devoted to fishing that has successfully blended recreational and commercial fishing conversations without general warfare. Something unique in the fishing business. They managed to pull that off by stepping on violators quickly. Their web traffic is very small due to that.
The web is a viscous circle, you need the arguements to generate the traffic to interest the sponsors to keep the site viable.
Best solution, post good information and stories often, be helpful to your co-members, re-read and think before you hit "enter" and ignore the baiters and let them die on their own from lack of attention.