I joined before Alex, so according to your theory I should hate him, but it's not the case :-) There were small flamewars previously also -- but you have to take in account that project was smaller back in that time, I think.
Well I did say *some* older developers not all, I didn't want to mention names. You are right there have been small flame wars on the list before, but I remember them being more reserved.
All people have different point of views, and I respect them, and I like to learn something new during arguing - that's not bad.
I'm not saying that arguing is bad, if noone argued then the implementation would be crap, usually the best idea survives in a debate (not always of course, see elected officials.) But just throwing insults at each other doesn't help anything, expect perhaps breaking down relations between developers. All I'm asking is people work out their differences face to face, instead of throwing stuff over wall at each other in plain sight. And most importantly get over it and return to devoting time to coding instead of flaming.