It took me a while to realize that the long slide at the beginning is a way to bookmark the current thread. I started chiming in when I kept going to the wrong thread. So there is a purpose to those at least.
The issue, in my opinion, is when slides go on and on and on and on and on. It is a distraction BUT I have gotten good at scrolling. Also, I do comment on an occasional slide but hopefully I don’t occupy a lot of space doing so. I do wonder if the many extra posts put more work on Ransomnote. Something to consider. Do long unrelated slides discourage engagement for people who are short on time and are checking for new information? I can see that it might. Would they eventually stop coming because this thread seems to be a coffee drinking group at the DQ?
The active posters are not the only ones interested.
Slide on slides -
I can tell in the first 5-10 words whether a post is something I want to make time for. So much information comes at us every single day by text, email, snail mail, web sites and apps that I suspect most people have learned to do that just to manage their free time well.
I’d guess that 25% of our posts on any thread are slides of some kind and I don’t think it’s hospitable to say some slides are welcome and others are not. Each slide is, by definition, completely off topic and superfluous, but there is someone enjoying every one of them. I don’t think any individual poster or collection of posters should judge which are allowed and which are forbidden, based on their own tastes. The slides don’t hurt anybody so we can afford to be kind and just ignore them if we’re not interested.