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I'm confused by this attitude. Why do you assume it would be blather?
You have to find value in some of the writing on this site, otherwise you wouldn't be here. If you don't like the top level posts, then you must find value in the replies. Replies that often feature multiple full paragraphs. But you don't dismiss those as blather.
What's wrong with the idea of taking one of those paragraphs, like the ones you see in the replies, and putting them in a top level post? Why is that such an onerous effort? Why do you assume that there could be no value in that?
Someone could write something interesting about Columbia, but I don't think it would add any value to just restate the same thing that all of us have probably read or heard a half dozen times. If they don't have anything original to say, but do want to hear what others think, I am against compelling top-level posters to try to do a creative writing exercise rewording a point they already heard.
I think if you check my post history, you'll see plenty of long-form posts and that all of my top-level posts are pretty long. I like putting in the effort because I think it's personally clarifying and occasionally even have things to say that are worth reading. I'm not real inclined to do a, "and what say you?" style of post if I don't think I have original thoughts. Nonetheless, I think that's too high of a standard to hold all top-level posts to.
We have Sunday threads if someone just wants to throw out a short question.
Otherwise what Primaprimaprima said is kinda true we don't want people who cant contribute three sentences to a discussion to be the ones that dictate what gets talked about.
Some people don't care what is talked about they just want something. But many posters care a great deal about the specific topic, and thus a low quality entry on a topic they don't care about is a double negative. It's crowding out topics they might care about, and it isn't interesting enough to expand what they might care about.
I can see the point. Thanks for elaborating, and as always, thanks for moderating.
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Frankly, I'd rather that we have rules that select against those types of posters. If someone can't even write one paragraph of non-trivial thought in response to a news story - not world-historically original thought, not thought worthy of prestigious publications, but just a simple "hey I've been thinking about the Israel campus protests and how they compare to BLM, I wonder if this will help Trump in November because he's more of the law and order candidate, could tip the scales in some battleground states" - then they're probably unlikely to post worthwhile replies in response to other people's posts, and we really don't need them here.
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