Blowups seem like they can be quite damaging even if they occur only a fraction of the time. Even without blowups, there's still the waste of space and collective attention. As I see it, the recent comments page is to some extent a commons that a minority of LWers are tempted to spend on their pet topic, and that a majority of LWers would like to see spent on topics more directly related to the site's theme, but the minority is here in the thread voting and the majority is not.

On the other hand, the vote numbers here are extreme enough that I find them surprising. Should I conclude that, as a community, we've decided to stop having on-topic and anti-mind-killing norms? Or is it the way I said it?