As an infrequent contributor, I won't say much regarding how often threads like this happen, but in defense purely of the thread that sparked this discussion (
Police Instantly Kill Innocent Man Over Prank Call), I will say that, at the time Damiana posted it, we didn't yet know about how the man acted when confronted by police. All we had was...
The Wichita Eagle wrote:“A male came to the front door,” Livingston said. “As he came to the front door, one of our officers discharged his weapon.”
Which does imply "instantly" to me. So as far as that goes, Damiana's title wasn't incorrect. It did come across as somewhat click-baity, but that's another matter, not as much for moderating as for guidelines as to how CAaSS (why don't we call it CASS? Who includes "and" in an initialism?).
My bigger concern is the way the discussion was handled within that thread, and it's something that's bothered me for a long time. Parties on both sides of various discussions appear to make either no, or at least very trivial, attempts at civil discourse. Threads seem to me to fairly frequently degenerate either into mudslinging or both sides constantly posting with seemingly little regard for the meaning of the other sides' posts. Dissenting opinions are often taken with bad faith, the responders seemingly more eager to rebut different viewpoints from their own than they are eager to understand that different viewpoint. Quotes of posts being responded to are often cherry-picked without context, and the responses frequently amount to hardly more than strawmen.
This isn't to say all the posts I read are like this. There is an incredible number of excellent, educational, and enlightening posts on CASS, and many threads are so full of good information that it's impossible to even keep up with them all. Despite this, it seems like as soon as the wrong chord is struck with someone or other, a great thread can degenerate quickly into petty bickering.
Is this a task for the mods? I don't know. My opinion on moderation has always been that less is more. Mods moderating the behavior of users is something that should generally only be done when the users show themselves to be incapable of handling the situation on their own, which I believe is the case here. Rather than demanding more moderation to make CASS better, it might be more productive for us to all make attempts to make our own posts and arguments better, not try to deceive by presenting issues as obviously one-sided, and to stop using "they did it first" to defend our own inappropriate behavior. It's not always easy, and it doesn't always work, even though I try my best to be civil, I sometimes end up being a jerk anyway, but to my mind it's a much better alternative than calling in the mods every time someone says something that doesn't fit our idea of what a good argument or post should be.