An idea to cut down on bickering back and forth. Posters would have to state their opinion, and then let it stand, rather than railing on and on.

I find threads too often degenerate from intelligent debate to child like arguing.

Well, some threads seem to go on and on with no real resolution, I must post the definition of a forum.

wikipedia

An Internet forum, or message board, is an online discussion site where people can hold conversations in the form of posted messages.

We can do this all day.
LOL just kidding.

Limiting the number of posts within any given thread would serve no purpose - what if the discussion isn't over? Accident investigation threads can easily run into the dozens of pages, and though I agree that sometimes people get off-track (and feel free to report off-topic posts or offensive posts by clicking on the little red ! button at the bottom right corner of any post), putting a number down and artificially limiting each thread would cause havoc - people would simply start another thread relating to the same topic and that would result in the relevant information being scattered through a bunch of threads, which would cause a lot more headaches than it solves.

As far as arguing back and forth, sometimes people need to clarify their opinions, or as new information becomes available, restate them. That's the reason why debates generally go back and forth between initial argument and rebuttal etc.

A great example of an epically long thread is : Pix from a Swamper - Remembering Craig Chenell.

I'd be happy to see that one go on forever.