avoid is getting into a dynamic where I ask people why they avoid X, and then when they provide some reasons I reply with counterarguments

<shrug> I think it's fine. Reasons that people provide might be strong or might be weak -- it's OK to tap on them to see if they would fall down. I would do the same thing to comments which (potentially) said "Yay images, we need more of them!".

In general, I would prefer not to anchor the expectations of the thread participants, but not at the price of interference with figuring out of what does the territory actually look like.

describe both the pro-X and anti-X positions using the same kind of language

I didn't (and still don't) have a position to describe. Summarizing arguments pro and con seemed premature. This really was just a simple open question without a hidden agenda.