There is an unfortunate tendency for some bleed-through of IC/OOC dislike which we should all do our best to avoid.
This-- though it's probably inevitable to some degree. Practice helps.
The ideal from where I stand is to ignore each other's OOC presence and just think of one another's IC personas as characters in a book. It's not wholly practical (and obviously I'm here talking), but ... well, that's the easiest way to go about it. Some of the best RP relationships I've had have been with people I did not personally know from Adam.
The first and foremost is people constantly trying to “win” rp. So we get a lot of attempts at “gotcha!” moments during debate, rather than actual attempts to prove a point on way or another. The goal is to look good and sound smart and hope that people will assume you’re right if you just score more points than the other guy. RP just for fun seems to be largely absent, and when it does appear it attracts minimal attention.
In certain areas, yes, that's so: it's best not to run around as a Mary Sue or similarly overly-awesome character.
However, I don't agree where IGS politics are concerned. When debates start, people don't usually argue to lose. The IGS is a great interstellar meeting place for people of all political stripes; if you want to see how unrealistic the resulting snarling and cheap-shotting is, go check out the comments section on a Slate political column.
That isn't to say that you have to use cheap-shots to be politically effective. I play a highly political character who,
because she hates to lose and is half-obsessed with intellectual superiority, normally refuses to be dragged into the general morass. It's not because she's a better person or cares less; it's a strategy to let her dismember people rhetorically without looking like she's even using rhetoric. Refusing to use "gotcha" moments, and either ignoring them or shrugging them off when they're used, makes people who use them look silly.
It's playing to win because the character is playing to win (in fact, is obsessed with "being right"), and as far as I can tell it does nothing at all to discourage good RP. It's also great fun when a character who functions that way breaks down and loses it: losing your cool in-character is a blast when you've got a reputation for keeping it.
None of this does or should require toning down the competition on the IGS. Nobody (
especially the people trying to be "reasonable" or "civil") is likely to be posting without caring about how seriously they're taken. After all, much of the fun in posting on a political forum comes from hoping to see your comments taken seriously....