That is a byproduct of Reddit specifically. With 90s style forums, this kind of discussion happens just fine because it ends up being limited to a few threads. On Reddit, all community members must interact in the threads posted in the last day or two. After two days they are gone and all previous discussion is effectively lost. So maybe this can be fixed by having sub-reddits sort topics by continuing engagement rather than just by age and upvotes.
A good feature would be for Reddit moderators to be able to set the desired newness for their subreddit. /r/aww should strive for one or two days of newness (today's status quo). But /r/communism can have one year of newness. That way the concerned people and concern trolls can be relegated to the yearly threads full of good-faith critiques of communism and the good-faith responses and everyone else can read the highly upvoted discussion. Everything else could fall in-between. /r/woodworking, which is now just people posting pictures of their creations, could split: set the newness to four months and be full of useful advice; set the newness for /woodworking_pics to two days to experience the subreddit like it is now. I feel like that would solve a lot of issues.
The whole idea of "containment threads" is a powerful one that works very well in older-style forums, but not nearly as well on Reddit. "containment subs" isn't the same thing at all, and the subs that try to run subsubs dedicated to the containment issues usually find they die out.
That is a byproduct of Reddit specifically. With 90s style forums, this kind of discussion happens just fine because it ends up being limited to a few threads. On Reddit, all community members must interact in the threads posted in the last day or two. After two days they are gone and all previous discussion is effectively lost. So maybe this can be fixed by having sub-reddits sort topics by continuing engagement rather than just by age and upvotes.
A good feature would be for Reddit moderators to be able to set the desired newness for their subreddit. /r/aww should strive for one or two days of newness (today's status quo). But /r/communism can have one year of newness. That way the concerned people and concern trolls can be relegated to the yearly threads full of good-faith critiques of communism and the good-faith responses and everyone else can read the highly upvoted discussion. Everything else could fall in-between. /r/woodworking, which is now just people posting pictures of their creations, could split: set the newness to four months and be full of useful advice; set the newness for /woodworking_pics to two days to experience the subreddit like it is now. I feel like that would solve a lot of issues.