I didn't read much of your thread so I was unaware that people had trashed it. That's very unusual around here.
Not at all; however, many of us are of the same mind, as are a lot of Christians, Muslims, etc.. So there is likely to be a lot of commonality in what we say or don't say. My guess is that you're more use to speaking to the choir rather than the "devil."
As for "shutting down" subjects, this simply doesn't happen. For one thing we have a great bunch of moderators who watch the posts for infractions, and pay attention to any complaints they get. For another thing, no one decides what direction a thread will take. Typically a thread will stay on topic until interest wains, and will then sometimes go off in another direction, or just die. Or, it may diverge into two or more interests, with people posting in all of them. Thing is, a topic will only last as long as people want to respond to it. I've had threads that have lasted for hundreds of post, most of which stayed on topic. Then again I've had threads that have fractured almost immediately, and those that haven't lasted 10 replies. There is simply no way to tell where your topic will go. About all you can do, as I have occasionally done, is to request that everybody try to stay on topic, at least for awhile.
Not at all. There is no such thing. Interest and interest alone dictates the direction a thread takes.
Again, not at all. My comment,
"when you bring up the issue of origins with evolution every pro-evolutionist on the forum pretty much shuts down,"
was only to let you know that most pro-evolutionists would have little or no interest in pursuing the issue, so more likely than not you won't get much of a debate going, at least from them. BUT, I've been wrong before. So
Just a note on measuring the success of a thread. If the number of replies is a tenth or more of the number of views, the thread is doing well.
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