When somebody writes a response to a critical book review, newspaper article, or any other publication, that response should be strictly limited in length — maybe to 20% or less the size of the original article. And when the authors of the initial piece reply, their rebuttal in turn should be held to less than 20% of the length of the previous response. That way any echoing arguments back and forth are quickly damped out. Writers on both sides of an issue are forced to get focused, and to avoid ad hominem attacks or other off-topic distractions. Moreover, the advantage of getting the "last word" is reduced. It's a matter of basic fairness.

I disagree — authors should always have the last word in a debate, especially against their more biased, obnoxious, or ignorant critics!

But if the authors err?

Ugh!

TopicLiterature - TopicHumor - 2002-02-04

Since we normally don't quote in a wiki, this natural damping ought to be easy to mandate in the comment parsing :) – Bo Leuf

(correlates: FreshwaterForgiveness, 2007-09-01 - Half Marathon Practice, HeadphoneWars, ...)