My advice is that if you don't like this type of node/thread, then, please don't read them. And don't reply to them.

I don't think the community is well served by trying to add rules to prevent people who are frustrated from expressing their frustration. Similarly, I'm tired of people requesting that such nodes be deleted. If every criticism just gets "swept under the carpet", then we certainly come across to the frustrated ones as hypocritical.

When someone gets frustrated with a response that they get and resort to an immature personal attack, it is easy to get frustrated yourself (especially when you don't see how their frustration is justified). But the best way to deal with your frustation is to teach by example how to deal with frustration in a mature manner. That takes some work, so, if you aren't feeling up to the work, please just ignore it and let someone else take it on.

I know it is very difficult to just do nothing when you see an immature post. But leaving the criticism in place and everyone ignoring it is, in my experience, one of the best ways to prevent the frustration from escalating. A very mature, considerate response is another good approach. If they can't deal with that, then ignoring them is again the best approach (too many attempts at mature responses isn't a good idea, either).

Any attempt to get rid of them just makes the problem worse down the road. Sometimes a lot worse. Personally, I want to hear when visitors get the impression that someone is being a jerk. Even if most such criticisms have more to do with the critic's maturity than anything else (which I'm not certain is or always will be the case), how "we" "come across" is not irrelevant.

Keeping the site friendly is an on-going goal that will not be acheived if we try circumvent the feedback mechanism.

I'd like to add a "please don't respond" option to Nodes to Consider such that off-topic nodes can be officially marked (via a community vote) as not a topic of discussion to be continued. Composing a reply to such a node would show you the reason the node was considered off-topic (and the vote count) and require a "Are you sure?" response. Also, such nodes could not be "approved" for their section (nor the front page) except by one of the editors. Also, a user setting would allow such nodes to be hidden from you.

I hope that this would give well-intentioned monks a way to express/reduce their frustration, will discourage such discussions from growing or appearing in future, while avoiding an increase in the frustration of the author as much as possible.

        - tye (but my friends call me "Tye")