I know this thread is certain to die and drop from the page quickly, but here goes: How do you steer and control the debate and discussion in a forum? Post a series of inflammatory articles and opinions knowing that others will not be able to resist responding, thereby derailing any serious discussion in legitimate threads. What is the result? Pushing more worthy threads from the first page and losing them to oblivion. This seems to work well and is downright Rove-worthy in it's success. How do you counter this tactic? Do not dignify the thread with a response. Don't take the bait. Carry on.
I remember when I used to post a lot on this forum. I think you outlined several reasons why I'm usually not on here.
I guess the question to ask yourself is what you want out of the D&D. As a source of information, I think it's top notch. For discourse, it's a decent resource for a kid on a debate team. Bump up the topics you feel worthy. Realize that it too might also fall from a well timed derail. We all know who the trolls and enablers are. I think it'd be an interesting experiment to ignore the enablers too. That'd be like a loss of 80% of D&D chatter.
