The point at which it becomes clear (e.g. digging up outdated documentation) that the argument is not being made in earnest is the point at which I stop taking

The point at which it becomes clear (e.g. digging up outdated documentation) that the argument is not being made in earnest is the point at which I stop taking the poster seriously. My comment was meant more for anyone else who might stumble on this thread than as a reply to OP. That said, I wouldn't look to run FreeBSD in a production environment without a good reason and 13 looks to be where I'll jump ship to Debian for homelab stuff. The big thing holding me back before was ZFS, but that's essentially a non-issue now.