I often see here topics that take off and lead to an extended discussions. I am very interesed, what is the outcome of these discussions? I can't read through thousands of messages. After the discussion has lasted for a little while AFAIK I can't even easily jump to top to read what the OP was about.
I guess the simplest solution would be to make a rule that the OP is responsible (but anyone can contribute) to create a summary, but that would be kind of difficult to enforce. And where would you put it? Post into the messages once a day or week ("the story so far: ...")?
The summary could include things like
- Short description what the initial idea was (with the help of retrospective and additional info that has become availiable)
- General tone of opinions (10 for, 20 against, 99 ppl had other ideas how to solve this)
- Which were the most popular (or best wrt some other criterion) alternatives offered?
- Did developers have any say (not technically possible; not in alignment with current grand plan; taken into plans; somebody has already implemented/fixed it; etc)