Ironically, asking for people to approach debate from a standpoint of logic and intellectual curiosity starts to force out the people with personality types that are driven by feelings.
I hang out with a group of people who are mostly T's (thinking based from the Myers-briggs personality tests) who love to engage in debate on a standpoint of logic and factual information, but we do have a few F's (feeling based) individuals who tend to engage in the same discussions from the basis of emotion. Both groups are focused on the topic in the way that provides the most value to them, so asking that one be the standard rule and the other be the deviation from the rule is already removing an entire group of people from being able to engage in meaningful discussion.
This would, of course, start down a rabbit hole with a lot of different hot topic issues, which isn't really appropriate for this thread right now.
I personally tried to stay out of the actual participation of WT, but found that it was my go-to location to get a multitude of different opinions and resources for any given subject. I'd read a thread until the main themes became apparent or until the discussion devolved into fights. While I'm not sad to see the vitriol and rudeness go, I will miss the extra information hub that I was using it for.