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In thinking more about this, I conclude that threads about complex ideas don’t work well.  Forum communication is fundamentally too impaired for the discussion of complex subjects.  The problem is not just that complex threads are difficult to participate in.  There is a larger problem in that complex threads stir up resentment among non-participating spectators, so they complain to the moderator to make it stop.   <o:p></o:p> Because they don’t make the effort to understand what is being said in a thread, they complain that the thread is circular or going nowhere.  They say it is beating a dead horse.  But is it really?  Or does it just seem that way to those who simply resent a complex discussion by others?  Everything appears to be going nowhere if you refuse to make the effort to understand it.   <o:p></o:p> And even the most productive threads have slow spots.  Some threads just require 15 pages to unravel a technical idea.  Anybody who actually makes the effort to understand what was being said on last Sunday’s locked thread would see that the thread was much more substantive and constructive than most threads here are.  And since when do threads have to be always “going somewhere” to have legitimacy?  We have threads here that are happily going nowhere and nobody seems bothered by those.  <o:p></o:p> So I don’t buy the beating-a-dead-horse charge.  While it must have been very irritating to several forum members who were pushing the abuse button, it nevertheless must have been interesting to others.  It has been viewed about 500 times since it was locked.    <o:p></o:p> We once had a long and technical thread about the return of steam locomotives, and that stirred up a lot of resentment among non-participating spectators who would come on every so often and make snide comments about how the thread was too long and going nowhere.  Obviously they just resented other people having a technical discussion.
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