> I mean sure, the "nudge" method works by locking, deleting even outright banning, but in the end, people will do what comes naturally.
Alternatively, you can just give people a place to do what comes naturally, so that it doesn't clutter their "productive effort." Talk pages on wikis, for example.
That's true. And I guess that's what "Meta" was supposed to be, but there's still a lot of the same handicaps applied there and "polling" questions (whatever that means today vs. tomorrow) get voted down to obvlivion. E.G : http://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/138411/why-are-const...
So even in a place that's talk "of" the place still isn't safe to talk of.
I think the problem there, is that meta.stackoverflow is still considered by the StackOverflow guys to be an instance of type QuestionAnswerSite. Which means that it's a place to ask objective questions about StackOverflow, not really a place to "talk about things."
What they really need is forum.stackoverflow.com. Or, more likely, given the leadership, discourse.stackoverflow.com.
Alternatively, you can just give people a place to do what comes naturally, so that it doesn't clutter their "productive effort." Talk pages on wikis, for example.