It's not only an unfortunate happenstance; often it's a deliberate tactic. "Gish gallop" and "flooding the zone" are two of many terms for it. It's trivial for

It's not only an unfortunate happenstance; often it's a deliberate tactic. "Gish gallop" and "flooding the zone" are two of many terms for it. It's trivial for one troll to tie up a dozen good-faith interlocutors with wild claims of their own and demands for proof of others'. It's very hard to devise or enforce rules that would prevent such behavior (far easier to police the reactions), so it's common on practically all forums. For various reasons related to what kinds of people are drawn to computing and what behaviors are rewarded there, it's inevitably going to be even more common here.