Regarding solutions, I wish we could force people to explicitly answer questions. For example, suppose Someone’s last reply said
Someone: Yes, really. But regardless, do you think that malnourished people don’t deserve to buy a bit of food?
Jacobian: I don’t actually think that. Now, why really?
And even better if we also forced people to ask specific questions with useful answers we could have
Jacobian: Why do you believe this? I thought most of the money was spent on quality-of-life things like metal roofs and better food.
Someone: I read it in [X]. But regardless, do you think that malnourished people don’t deserve to buy a bit of food?
Jacobian: I don’t actually think that. Now, regarding [X], I think it disagrees with [Y].
The point is that Someone isn’t derailing the discussion by saying what they wanted to say. They are derailing the discussion by ignoring earlier questions. If they did answer those, then the original thread of discussion would be easy to preserve.
Also, this is easy to enforce. It should be clearly visible, which questions have explicit answers and which don’t, even without an understanding of what is being discussed.
Of course, I might not want to answer a question if I don’t think it’s relevant. But at that point, you, or some third party, should be able to say “why didn’t you answer question X?”, and I should answer it (or say “I don’t know”/”I don’t understand the question”).
Regarding solutions, I wish we could force people to explicitly answer questions. For example, suppose Someone’s last reply said
Someone: Yes, really. But regardless, do you think that malnourished people don’t deserve to buy a bit of food?
Jacobian: I don’t actually think that. Now, why really?
And even better if we also forced people to ask specific questions with useful answers we could have
Jacobian: Why do you believe this? I thought most of the money was spent on quality-of-life things like metal roofs and better food.
Someone: I read it in [X]. But regardless, do you think that malnourished people don’t deserve to buy a bit of food?
Jacobian: I don’t actually think that. Now, regarding [X], I think it disagrees with [Y].
The point is that Someone isn’t derailing the discussion by saying what they wanted to say. They are derailing the discussion by ignoring earlier questions. If they did answer those, then the original thread of discussion would be easy to preserve.
Also, this is easy to enforce. It should be clearly visible, which questions have explicit answers and which don’t, even without an understanding of what is being discussed.
Of course, I might not want to answer a question if I don’t think it’s relevant. But at that point, you, or some third party, should be able to say “why didn’t you answer question X?”, and I should answer it (or say “I don’t know”/”I don’t understand the question”).