I don't want to speak for
@AudubonB, but I can tell you that it's rarely either of the two options you've listed. Certainly not the last one. To keep this discussion and others healthy/balanced, as you mention, requires a lot of human moderation and nudging. We have
Forum Rules to uphold in order to keep TMC a cordial and informative place. Threads like this can take a lot of effort from a very limited moderation staff. Shutting them down means that moderators can do a better job site-wide instead of spending too much time on one thread, or allowing it to go haywire because it has run away for too many pages.
The idea of shutting this thread down seems like it would reduce workload, but I suspect the same kind of commentary would pop up in the Elon Musk thread as soon as this was shut down, or the big investors' thread, etc. Stifling talk about Elon/Twitter would potentially be just as difficult as maintaining cordiality in this thread.