I find it moderately amusing that my clone thread set this off, since I myself was kind of annoyed by them at first. I guess the habit grew on me. (Yes, I know at least some of the people who've commented were not aiming specifically at me but at the practice as a whole.) I would summarize my thinking as follows:
Here on The Cellar there are an infinite number of ways for us to annoy each other. If it's not the clone threads, it would be something else. Furthermore, topic drift and threadjacking are usually the order of the day.
I expect Flint to step in and remind us that the traditional clone thread was not intended to receive any replies. But of course here people will comment on anything. Hell, we've commented on obvious spam postings before they can be removed by the moderators. For my money, a large number of these postings are crap, but that number isn't anywhere near 90% (see
Sturgeon's Law), so I feel we're ahead of the game.
In any event, I've grown to appreciate the wittiness of many of the clone thread titles, and sometimes one will spawn an interesting or amusing discussion. However, I'd have no problem at all if it were determined by common consensus that clone thread titles ought to just be posted in a single thread.
But I would also suggest that Nothingland is, by its nature, well, nothing. There's only so much we can do by way of organizing or proceduralizing it before it became Somethingland.
