I did see that thread, yes. I too have had my moments where I felt the need to call out someone here and point blank tell them what I thought of them at the time. I'm like that whether someone is on a message board or sitting in the same room with me.
But again, I was referring to the fact that although there is a lot of "chest-puffing" and smart-ass antagonism going on here on any given day, there seems to be a lack of stories about actual physical confrontations at the trade shows. I see now that there actuall have been a few, like the ones Quiet and Dynaspain mentioned.
But there are a lot of existing ill feelings between webmasters for many reasons beyond just the typical pissing matches. What about any hotheaded Euro or Russian webmasters that have made the trip over to one of the big shows? Some of them are banned from certain programs, some were in certain programs and weren't paid, etc etc. What about a webmaster from a country in the middle east, maybe someone from here said something they didn't like?
Those kinds of political motivations can be pretty powerful, as we learned last september. I'm not disappointed that there hasen't been more mention about fights over the years, I'm just surprised about it.