I feel like a lot of the people who have been here for a long time are actually pretty chill about things.
I suppose that's due in part to the fact that they have been here a long time.
If you really were constantly worked up by everything here you probably wouldn't stick around for too long. Admittedly some users who can regularly get their knickers in a twist do continue to hang around, but they're surely the minority.
And while I'm probably grossly and unfairly generalising/hypothesising, they've probably got something going on a little differently in their heads.
I think one of the bigger things that can make this community (or at least the Forum community) seem negative, is the fact that those who DO make a stink, stand out more than those who don't.
Controversial topics get lots of replies and therefore a lot of arguments (or debates), but there's always loads of smaller completely innocent topics too, where people don't argue and get on with each other.
And we have fairly relaxed moderation. Our rules are reasonably specific but for the most part never say what you can or cannot discuss, and arguments are allowed to continue. This does give us some freedom, which I think is great in a community.
The downside to it all however is we get a few unsavoury characters, as all communities do. But since they can carry on getting in arguments, they start to fester as a character. And before you know it they lose sense of themselves and begin to retaliate in unacceptable ways, such as phishing or abusing other users, or they spam the forums. And then when they get banned they take it as some giant personal slight against them, and decide to attack the community or Badspot.
That's the one thing that's bad with our community. It's free enough that these broken individuals get a foothold in the community and draw attention to themselves.
In more moderated communities those sort of individuals are much more quickly picked out and gotten rid of. And that's a lot easier when you have LOTS of strict moderators, compared to our few relaxed moderators, who are otherwise preferable.