I think you may have been quite fortunate in that regard tbh
At the height of my time building and managing forums, 1998 til 2010 and 22 forums on the go at any one time on behalf of their US owner, it was extremely commonplace to arrive onsite in the morning and read through the pages of notes from my moderating staff regarding various members and their behaviours. It was not pretty much of the time. Most of my staff removed posts before the main membership saw them and left them for me to review in the hidden staff area (which every forum has). Some of the stuff posted by people would make your hair curl and not just by relative newbies but long standing, well respected members who had reached the end of their tether with someone.
Sadly there will always be arguments on forums, just as there is always arguments in life. Forums are different since members have a degree of anonimity, sat behind a keyboard and screen, some feel they can type what they want and they cannot be punished.....in my forums case, they were very wrong. I honestly cannot say how many reprimands and bans I gave out over the time I build and managed forums, it runs into the thousands. I always gave members time to cool off and gave them 3 chances to behave reasonably if the issue was close to the edge but sometimes I had no choice but to ban outright on both username and IP when they went over the TOS line badly enough.
I imagine that the same or similar happens here.....and that means that members are therefore largely insulated from the serious stuff and if the "playground squabbles" happen they get pounced on quickly and dealt with by warnings both on threads and via PM from staff.
But if you were lucky enough to participate in a friendly and clean forum, then that will be more to do with the staff being proactive and not so much about everyone getting on well 24/7.