[RyanHighman]

Definitely generally agree with what you're saying. The forums is more or less the dedicated space for community discussions, and closing threads willy nilly can certainly stifle that, which is not what we want. That said, it can be a fine line to to walk between facilitating an open, constructive (even if uncomfortable) discussion and sponsoring a thread for people to flame each other back and forth.

The truth is that it sometimes makes more sense to temporarily close a thread that's getting out of hand, rather than let it fester with people getting progressively more and more up in arms. Ideally if someone says something shitty, off-topic, or bait-y, people would not engage and continue with the discussion at hand. What seems to often happen instead is a multi-page derailment, which inhibits actual constructive conversation and imo mostly serves to further raise tensions.

It's (very clearly) not a solved problem, but I think threads like this are great for people to leave thoughts and feedback on how to better handle these sorts of tricky situations.

You had the opportunity to do the funniest thing to this thread...