I find it difficult to follow a post on a subject that has motivated an uprising of people to spend all their energies to debunk, derail, or diminish the value of the inquiry. If I read a new OP and I find it interesting, I'd like to follow along in a discussion about it. But if it is swamped with over 50% attacks and disrespectful disregard and ignoring of the point of the discussion, I lose interest in wading through all of that stuff, because it just becomes more about someone else's resistance to the value of even discussing it.
So as a recommendation moving forward, it occurred to me that it would be fairly easy to remove that distraction from that value of the discussion.
If you write an OP to be discussed, it will be responded to by some who have an interest in discussing it, and some who only wish to undermine any confidence in the value of it as a subject.
So if all could adhere to a simple guideline of doing the following, it would be easier to follow along an idea without having to languish in the noise of non cooperative discussion:
If you're responding to someone in the post who has made a valuable contribution to the discussion, and your response is a further contribution to that discussion, then keep the subject heading. If you're responding to an attack that has no contribution to the discussion, then change the subject heading to include the word "Digression" preceding the actual subject, so we can know it is about one persons difficulty rather than a valid contribution or even valid challenge to the main point.
An alternative is to simply disregard those digressions, but it seems very few people can resist the bait, and the result is I have to attempt to read through a bunch of one persons difficulty with the ability to be open to an alternative to the popular paradigm.
So just a suggestion as a means to preserve the value of a post for everyone and not just those intent on hijacking the point to be more about what's wrong with an idea.
The main reason for this suggestion is that there are probably many people who might make interesting contributions to the OP, but abandon the post after being drawn down a 50 post rabbit hole of insults and digression that has nothing to do with it.
Just a thought. Give it a try.
So as a recommendation moving forward, it occurred to me that it would be fairly easy to remove that distraction from that value of the discussion.
If you write an OP to be discussed, it will be responded to by some who have an interest in discussing it, and some who only wish to undermine any confidence in the value of it as a subject.
So if all could adhere to a simple guideline of doing the following, it would be easier to follow along an idea without having to languish in the noise of non cooperative discussion:
If you're responding to someone in the post who has made a valuable contribution to the discussion, and your response is a further contribution to that discussion, then keep the subject heading. If you're responding to an attack that has no contribution to the discussion, then change the subject heading to include the word "Digression" preceding the actual subject, so we can know it is about one persons difficulty rather than a valid contribution or even valid challenge to the main point.
An alternative is to simply disregard those digressions, but it seems very few people can resist the bait, and the result is I have to attempt to read through a bunch of one persons difficulty with the ability to be open to an alternative to the popular paradigm.
So just a suggestion as a means to preserve the value of a post for everyone and not just those intent on hijacking the point to be more about what's wrong with an idea.
The main reason for this suggestion is that there are probably many people who might make interesting contributions to the OP, but abandon the post after being drawn down a 50 post rabbit hole of insults and digression that has nothing to do with it.
Just a thought. Give it a try.