An idea Ben and I came up with was having an off-topic comment section of a post. Authors get to decide what is “on topic” for a discussion, and there’s an easily accessible button that labels a comment “off topic”. Off topic comments move to a hidden-by-default section at the bottom of the comments. Clicking it ones unveils it and leaves it unveiled for the reader in question (and it has some kind of visual cue to let you know that you’ve entered off-topic world).
My new belief: this option should be called “collapse”. Rather than having a new element in the comments section, it just forces a comment to be collapsed-by-default, and sorted to the bottom of the page (independent of how much karma it has), possibly not showing up in the Recent Discussion section.
This has two benefits of a) not having to create any new sections that take up conceptual space on the site, instead using existing site mechanics, b) is more ideologically neutral than “on-topic / off-topic”, which would have been a bit misleading/deceptive about what sort of uses the offtopic button might have.
My new belief: this option should be called “collapse”. Rather than having a new element in the comments section, it just forces a comment to be collapsed-by-default, and sorted to the bottom of the page (independent of how much karma it has), possibly not showing up in the Recent Discussion section.
This has two benefits of a) not having to create any new sections that take up conceptual space on the site, instead using existing site mechanics, b) is more ideologically neutral than “on-topic / off-topic”, which would have been a bit misleading/deceptive about what sort of uses the offtopic button might have.