The problem as I see it is posters are incentivized to fight. Maybe it's because they feel like they have to defend something they love, or they just want to masturbate where everyone can see them. Whatever.
Don't go ham on moderation, give negative incentive to cause fights and remove the feedback loop that keeps people stuck to A&N. Here's the fix:
(1) Reset everyone's (EVERYONE'S) settings to not receive sticker notifications. This becomes the default for new users as well. This solves the problem of sticker sperging for posters inclined to be well-behaved, because that little red blip at the top of the screen is a siren's song no mortal man can resist. Allow everyone to turn it back on at their leisure, letting only retards care about stickers, as I think we can all agree is the natural order.
This is a technological solution without causing an uptick in work for administrators and janitors. If more TTS threads arise as a result, mock them for illiteracy.
(2) Restore the Political Sperging sticker to Articles & News only with stipulations. This is one of the few pointed stickers where there is very little room for sarcasm. You didn't like that guy's sperging, you gave him (a little stone) head. Fine.
The stipulation is that when people are fighting, they should take it to PMs to not shit the thread up. Give the same person PS three times in the same thread? You obviously have some sort of objection. The system opens a new PM on behalf of the sticker-giver to the sticker-receiver automatically, when the sticker-giver clicks Moai a third time.
Bonus: the sticker-receiver will find this annoying. The sticker-receiver will either block the person out of annoyance (this will happen often), solving the problem at a micro scale, or the sticker-giver will cool the fuck out, solving the problem on a macro scale.
Yes, I am fully aware that NO FUN (stickers) ALLOWED is in effect under the AT, but until you lock it down to just the Correct Opinions people are going to want to express themselves, so there's no use fighting human nature.
(3) Rewrite the rules of Deep Thoughts to be more like What.CD's Library forum. If you weren't cool enough to experience it when it was open (
) the gist was this: only debate-quality discussion was allowed, and moderators would beat you down for being a spaz. While the entire site had a "be respectful" policy (like Discord but slightly less gay) only the most autistic would survive. I mean really autistic, writing an entire thesis that no one would read, every single post. Anyway, that's what Q&A is for if you're looking to enjoy yourself.
