I for one hope the thread stays open for a time. Once an internet thread goes to 7 pages conventional wisdom holds that only the hardcore are hanging in so it should be a minimal disturbance to the non-participants.
It's extremely unlikely anything new will be learned of Glock or any of its competitors but I'm fascinated by the way some folks can take the matter personally. I find comparisons to non-firearms poo-flinging threads unsatisfying. Whether it's AMD vs. Intel, the old HD vs. Blu-Ray or a classic Mustang vs. Firebird, handgun proponents seem to be far more emotionally invested in defending their positions.
I found what I believed to be very plausible speculation on the cause on a sister forum:
… I agree that people get overly wrapped up in what weapons they own. I think that people tend to mix their identities & their weapons choices. i.e. People tend to take any negative comments about one of their weapons as a personal attack. I believe that the largest part of this blurring of identity with weapons choices is the desire to rely on a weapon for safety instead of acknowledging that the weapon is merely a tool and that safety is dependent far more on the person than on the tool. The result is that anything that negatively impacts the owner's view of his weapon therefore also negatively impacts on his feeling of security and on his ability to provide his own security.
Should this prove to be the case one would expect that, should a participant come to the conclusion that the correct priority is mindset followed by skillset followed by toolset, he will gradually come to not care what anybody thinks of his choice in tools. He'll be incapable of taking it any more seriously than a Snap-On vs. Craftsman skirmish.
Warning: Pop-Psy speculation off the port bow.
When folks get all wrapped up in their beliefs, it seems something called
hostile media perception bias can rear its head. This, I believe, leads to people challenging assertions that were never made. No offense meant to the poster involved but the response to XB's post is a near clinical definition of reading stuff that simply wasn't there and replying to it. XB's postings probably don't constitute "media" in a strict sense but I believe the same perception bias is at work in interpreting the posting.
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/~jpiliavi/965/hwang.pdf
Wiki condensed version:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hostile_media_effect
An obsessive need to justify one's choice in firearms, whether by ascribing strained advantages to the chosen product or denigrating the alternatives is endlessly fascinating to me.
Regrettably, we all too often take such discussions personally. The irony is, of course, that the larger question is why we take such things personally in the first place.
That thinking is good old fashioned communism. 
Maybe you two should get a room