I would first like to respond to jlongino's point. I didn't make my post private, and I don't think it should have been private. It didn't really help that your response to my private feedback (which I always give) on my -- was "So what?" But the real reason why it was public, why it had to be public, is that it was mostly addressed at people who voted for your post. Being that I don't know who voted for your post, there is no way I can respond to them without making it public. Therefore my main points had to either not be made, or had to be made publically.

Now for the personal points.

Yes, you have become more mature in your posts. Your writing style has improved. You have become more effective at getting your points across. I hope you will next learn not to be so free with underhanded insults and assaults. (Perhaps you just learned that.)

As for forgiveness, I won't give it, and you hopefully don't need it. This is not personal. I simply do not agree with the word "sorry". I have seen too many people who will do mean things, say, "sorry" - and then having been forgiven will go ahead and do the same mean things again. After all, why not when forgiveness is so easily come by, what value does "personal responsibility" have?

I am not a Christian. I don't believe that repenting magically makes things OK. The action remains bad no matter how sincerely you do or do not regret it. It does not matter what a great person you are, or how many other good works you do, that action remains bad.

However I also try to avoid grudges. I try to seperate the person from the event. If your behaviour from now on indicates improvement, you will never hear from me about this again. I won't forgive you, but I also won't hold it against you. Because while I don't believe in repentance, I do believe in learning. If you study animal behaviour and game theory (which I have), you will learn that the past is irrelevant except as a predictor of the future. (Classic fallacy, people tend to believe that the amount they have invested in a particular course of action, project, etc matters in deciding whether to stay the course. It doesn't. For now you can see a decent popular article on it in the Google cache.)

I believe that. The past is past. If your future actions indicate that you have changed, I will react accordingly. And I encourage others to do likewise.

UPDATE
As jlongino pointed out in a reply that some may miss, he was not saying that the post shouldn't have been made publically, but certain aspects of it shouldn't have been done in public.

My opinion is that it is unfortunate that I felt motivated to write a post like that, but the tone of the post is part and parcel of the strength of the message that I was trying to get across. Furthermore it was not something I choose to do lightly, as should be apparent if you read through my posting history.

I would first like to respond to jlongino's point. I didn't make my post private, and I don't think it should have been private. It didn't really help that your response to my private feedback (which I always give) on my -- was "So what?" But the real reason why it was public, why it had to be public, is that it was mostly addressed at people who voted for your post. Being that I don't know who voted for your post, there is no way I can respond to them without making it public. Therefore my main points had to either not be made, or had to be made publically.

I guess that your third sentence is either out of context to the rest of the paragraph, needs pronoun clarification or is a creative exercise in reading between the lines.

I would also like to point out that I didn't say that either post shouldn't have been made, only that the negative aspects (e.g., insults, rudeness) should have been addressed privately (directly).