I have had the feeling for a while that Hugh doesn't usually respond to reasonably stated questions and doesn't generally engage in much actual debate, but that he responds very strongly when personally attacked. The numbers are in. In two recent threads (War Whores and Elevator of Death), Hugh responds respectively to 15/8 and 10/22 posts that attack him personally in some way, and only responds to 1/20 and 5/30 posts that address or mention him but don't contain a personal insult. He responds even less often when the post does not address or metion him at all (1/12 and 1/36).
In his own threads, the best way to stop Hugh is to post without addressing or mentioning him. A close second is to try to engage him in reasoned debate on his specific claim or his general theory. The best way by far of keeping him going is to attack him personally. I know from personal experience that he almost never responds to well framed questions free of invective or aggressiveness.
Since the 'one KWH post per non-Hugh thread' rule went into effect, it is hard to do the same analysis for other people's threads. But if anyone has suggestions for non Hugh threads in which he famously intervened, I'll be glad to collect the same data and evaluate quantitatively the level of disruption he causes on the board. So far, I don't see much there. I didn't count it precisely, but going through those threads, I estimate that the cycle of personal attacks involves Hugh and maybe 4 or 5 other posters at most.
