Some threads become very active in their early stages and many posters start to repeat the points made in previous posts, most probably because they don't read the earlier posts because they're are so many of them. It's also common for other posters, in the absence of additional posts, replies and updates from the OP, to start arguing with each other and sometimes derailing the thread. In these situations I become interested only in any additional posts made by the OP some of whom seem to abandon the threads of they start to receive a lot of criticism (and some may have been started with an element of trolling in mind).
Can we not have an option to follow a thread but with a flag we can turn on or off as required to get notifications only when the OP posts?