Some Mods here ( emphasis: Some) are quirky around here and pretty much arbitrarily do whatever they want, so I'm going to try to step carefully around this.
I was expecting that posters may say ANYTHING they want, as long as they're willing to take the heat and defend their words. If they can't take it they'll get run off the boards by vicious attacks from other posters. Pretty much the only way a thread gets locked or people get banned is by bringing up the families or real life addresses of other posters. You can threaten, cajole, insult and harass as much as you want, as long as it stays on the board. IMHO that's pretty much the way it should be. The only solution to 'bad' or unwise speech is more and better speech that shoots it down.
I think mild trash talk can be funnyif is intelligent and witty, not schoolyard and petty or dirty .
There's no way to police the internet unless you want to ban every poster that doesn't toe the forum line, and it's pretty much established that if you do that you're going to have the most boring board in the world in short order and NOBODY is going to come except a bunch of rubes exchanging pleasantries.
My SUGGESTION (not demand!) is that mods and owners get together and decide what their goals are, lay down a clear set of rules, and remain very reluctant to ban anyone or lock threads until there's some kind of danger that something is going to happen off the boards. Or if posters have to flame,I think a separate thread for trash talk should be created on an invitation basis, to let express people what they feel without the danger of being read by all posters.
Just my two cents, take it for what it's worth.
Anyway, I love this site and I respect the moderators and owners of this forum.