I have been thinking that the WO thread is the forum's closest thing to a troll box that might also allow a kind of one-stop bitcoin current events shopping that will bring attention to other forum threads too.
Sure there is a bit of a bitcoin preference twist and a desire to shut down the shills and alt coin pumpers from most but not all of the discussion, but the thread is supposed to be largely bitcoin specific too - while anyone knows that shills and trolls do seem to prefer a one-stop shopping location too (that's what Jorge Stolfi used to say through 2014/15 about why he would not leave the WO thread - until he discovered some "better" places on reddit - I believe r/buttcoin).
Surely, the volume of posts can become a bit too much, too, and especially during periods of rumblings in BTC's price, my posts included, so sometimes, you can merely just filter, skim or ignore what the posts that do not appeal to you.. again my posts included..
From the outside, there may seem to be some periods of "over-consensus" and cliquishness, including the recent hat thingie-ma-jiggie, and some assertions of other supposed traditions that might merely be talking points ... Anyhow, I believe that overall there remain decent attempts to entertain meaningful deviance from attempts at meaningless consensus and substantial challenging of ideas, while a tolerant kind of piling on the shutting down of the shills and altcoin pumpers, to the extent that is even possible.