That's certainly not true, a neutral bystander could easily be offended by the way that a group of people are treated around here. I believe it's called sympathy, a word that seems to mean less and less these days.

OP, your poll option #3 needs some work.

Would you mind explaining what you mean?

Thanks for that. I went over the top.

Unfortunately most people can't have a civilized conversation.

the problem with these threads is they resurface every 3-5 months and the same crap gets discussed lol.

nothing new comes out of them.

religion isnt a very grey area. you either have your beliefs and will defend them at all costs or you really couldnt care less. personally i feel mass religions need to die off and they solely exist as a way of coping with the idea that one day you will die. but it doesnt really help. one day we will all die and there will be nothing after that. we exist so that others after us can also exist. believing in a god, an afterlife, anything, wont change that

Oh, I see.

I overlooked that. I'll change it then.

That is the "armor" that i'm talking about. I believe in God. Im not going to let some forum dorkprick convince me otherwise, and I dont care how many threads are made about it. With so many cultural views and different upbringings, you cant expect everybody to be sympathetic about everything. Have armor or dont participate in them or both. Hell, we used to have a bonifide racist on this site .. Ridiculous. This even applies to gaming part of this website. How many threads get hijack because a member made a comparison to competitor, then competitor member comes in then console war.  In general this site need thicker skin, after years of participation on site I honestly believe its an necessity.

I'm OK with religious threads in general (even though I'm not a huge fan of them), but I'd really like there to be tighter moderation about the stance taken in them. I'm mainly talking about the choice of words. The threads mentioned in the OP are excellent examples of this: The titles are extremely provocative and aggressive, which is pretty much asking for a toxic discussion. We're talking about a matter where almost everyone has a strong opinion and swaying the opposing side's opinion is extremely difficult in any manner, and I'm 100 % sure the provocative and aggressive language doesn't help.

tl;dr: Enforce friendly language and everything should be mostly fine in my opinion.

Topic creators that do this frivolously or profligately are very tasteless, I agree. But I don't want the "topic police" to come in and say, "Sorry, this is the tenth thread about global warming this week, locked."

Don't feed the trolls. Report threads that are getting out of control and they'll get locked, and people that are deliberately fanning the flames will get banned. But if the remaining threads are reasonably civil despite being heated, and they are simply too numerous for your taste?



[edit:  Damn, I just realized I picked the wrong option.]

P.S. Thanks for the "couldn't care less" option.