Quote Originally Posted by Iscah View Post
The idea that you "own your thread" is a mindset that contributes to the forum not working well. It's a cyclical thing that your thread starts off by expressing your own opinion front-and-centre in the title and introduction, and it steers the course of debate; the thread exists to discuss your opinion on the subject, not the subject as a whole. The main page of the forum ends up looking more like the discussion that should be taking place within a single thread, but it's disjointed and won't stay together over time so it can't easily be reviewed.

An all-opinions focus thread isn't going to form in this situation, at least without the mods working on merging and deleting threads. And which of these "individual post-threads" deserves to get upheld over the others?

Imagine if, instead of all these individual thoughts, the first person wanting to discuss the issue makes a thread with a neutral(ish) title: "October 2020 Housing War Feedback". Instead of each other person starting their own thread for their opinion, they make it as a post within that thread. They do own their individual post, but the thread itself has been made "for everyone" - it's not an opinion but a container for everyone's opinions.

It all starts from a different mindset approach to the forum - a shared space for everyone where the thread will be an ongoing public discussion on an issue, so opening posts are constructed accordingly.
The problem with mega threads is they can go off topic REALLY easily. And with little to no moderator support / actions in these forums it gets bad really quick.

Just look at our resident Necromancer troll as a case study.

Been here for months, nothing done about them.