Depends how professional your dev and moderation team wants to appear, Karyuu.
I say that from a position of experience overseeing a community far-larger than Planeshift's and also one that's free/open-source. We tended to deal with the criticism by facts first, then deal with emotions afterwards.
You can coach a dev/moderation team to behave with protocol, but it's much harder to get the users to do so... it's just the way things are... almost everywhere.
I agree both side SHOULD show equal respect... but usually, with most communities, the devs/mods/etc are usually having to take the lead and set the example.
I'm NOT trying to refute or rebuke what you say because I do agree... but I've never seen a forum utopia elsewhere so I think expecting one here is unreal... users are users, they can be insensitive asses at times (and I'm sure I've been guilty of it here at least once!!), but showing emotion before dealing with the facts sends a message to others in the community that they should react first and then deal with the facts afterwards.
