@mikelavigne made some great points that sum up what I see. Many of the most knowledgeable and experienced LISTENERS that previously contributed here regularly are around rarely or never, because they've tired of posts that detract from listening-based opinions, suggestions and questions.
I abhor censorship and really don't want to go down the road of deleting opinions I don't agree with. The frustrating part of all the derailed threads is that most of the objectivists restate the same talking points over and over in threads where OP asks for insights from those who've listened to a particular piece of gear.
Maybe one day I'll see a post where someone proves that they've studied the correlation between a sonic descriptor and a measurement with a large statistically signifcant population and low margin of error...then use that to perform perfect unbiased testing on all the sonic parmeters I'm interested in...and then they'll apply all that on a large statistically significant population A/B-ing the two tonearms I'm considering. Then they can tell me they proved A is better than B. Perhaps, I'll then take note of their recommendation.
Maybe an "off topic" button that flags a moderator review after ## votes would help. Some sites move posts to start a separate thread rather than deleting it, where it makes sense.
IMHO thumbs up and down don't really get the job done. Just read a sports site where all the rival fans vote up their own teams. It doesn't advance the original conversation. Cheers,
Spencer