Inspired by this blog post I read ( Discourses We Can Stop Having, Ranked | Defector), do you think there are certain topics or discussions so played out, so thoroughly analyzed, that any further discussions are pointless and silly? For me, I don’t see any harm in discussing or posting on on well-worn matters. For one thing, not everyone may be as well versed as some others in these topics, so the discussion might benefit from a fresh perspective. More importantly though, while the main topic may be played out, tangential issues or discussions may arise that merit further thought and prove fruitful for further exploration.
There are topics here on the Dope that are banned. Mostly for being intractable, but also because everything that can be said has been said by somebody sometime.
By coincidence, Mod @What_Exit just updated the TOS and called our attention to it here:
Which TOS / combined rules includes this section:
Does 0,999… = 1?
Airplanes on treadmills?
Definition of a majority
The JFK assassination
This just needs two things:
Clarification and
Realization that I am right and you are wrong. 
“Who is Mr. Ruda Duda?”
14 initials in a mysterious unsolved abbreviation
I’m interpreting the topic as stuff that while technically you can still debate, you probably shouldn’t (as opposed to stuff like 9/11 conspiracy theories that already have a definitive answer)
Male Circumcision is my #1 for this, as to this very second there are people having life or death arguments over it all over the internet. People dedicate their lives to being pro or anti for something that really doesn’t matter that much. And obviously nobody is going to really jump from one side or the other from somebody angrily arguing it on the internet.
I feel like this thread would benefit from a 10 minute funk jam called “Doing It to Death”:
On the topic of the thread, I don’t think there has been any movement on any side about the morality of abortion. I think it’s fine to discuss any new laws and restrictions, and their implications for fetuses and pregnant people, but the morality of abortion itself has been done to death with no movement.
ISWYDT.
Haha! No pun intended. Just following the wording in the OP (and my video).
What is the actual color of that durn dress?
When does human life begin.
This is a philosophical and semantic question with no real answer, and one for which opinions depend entirely on political beliefs that are unrelated to the question at hand. So trying to debate it as if there was a objectively correct answer is pointless.
Similarly, “does god exist” is going to result in both sides making arguments that are based on reasoning that are totally foreign to the other side, and so aren’t going to persuade anyone.
I don’t think any topic that has practical, real consequences should be avoided because “it’s been done too many times.” As long as a problem exists, it needs addressing. To avoid a topic that is very real, pressing, and affects many people - like climate change or abortion - would be like someone trying to shut off a carbon monoxide detector “because it’s beeping nonstop and is annoying.”
The exception would be matters in which something is obviously true and other people are simply trolling for laughs, like Asuka pointed out - 9/11 or Flat-Eartherism - but that’s not so much ‘debate’ as trolling.
And this might not be the right thread for it, but I would argue that the TOS does indeed unfairly classify some topics as un-discussable when they are very discussable. For instance, the part where it bans Dopers from starting threads stating that men are disadvantaged in society - I’m sure there may be at least 1 way in which men might face some disadvantage compared to women, worth a thread, while men are still possessing many other advantages over women. (Such as men being likelier to be drafted in wartime rather than women). It shouldn’t be wrong to start a thread about one specific aspect of the matter while still acknowledging the overall advantage men have.
Climate change is obviously true.
In light of the recent death of novelist David Lodge, I’m reminded of his character Prof. Morris Zapp, whose professional aspirations were along the lines of this thread:
Some years ago he had embarked with great enthusiasm on an ambitious critical project: a series of commentaries on Jane Austen which would work through the whole canon, one novel at a time, saying absolutely everything that could possibly be said about them. The idea was to be utterly exhaustive, to examine the novels from every conceivable angle, historical, biographical, rhetorical, mythical, Freudian, Jungian, existentialist, Marxist, structuralist, Christian-allegorical, ethical, exponential, linguistic, phenomenological, archetypal, you name it; so that when each commentary was written there would be simply nothing further to say about the novel in question. The object of the exercise, as he had often to explain with as much patience as he could muster, was not to enhance others’ enjoyment and understanding of Jane Austen, still less to honour the novelist herself, but to put a definitive stop to the production of any further garbage on the subject. The commentaries would not be designed for the general reader but for the specialist, who, looking up Zapp, would find that the book, article or thesis he had been planning had already been anticipated and, more likely than not, invalidated. After Zapp, the rest would be silence. The thought gave him deep satisfaction.
But the details are complex and somewhat uncertain, and therefore the issue is still worthy of debate. What’s unworthy of debate is the climate denialist position, and even that is less because it can’t be addressed than because the people who hold it are almost certain to be bad faith debaters or outright irrational.