Right now there is only one way ghosts arise on DF, and it is by unburied corpses. There is ways of dealing with them, and it is by burying the corpse or engraving a slab.
And he is talking about changing these things, and therefore, it is worth discussing.
We should wait the release to judge the new features, instead of writing pages and pages of replies based off a line or a picture on the devlog.
...
Even if these complaints threads demanded your blood it wouldn't be as nonsense as complaining about a bridge on a picture showing a work-in-progress.
Actually, no, at the time that Toady is actively working on something, or just before he starts actively working on something is the best time to discuss such things, because that is when he can most easily change his decisions without breaking existing code or having him too distracted by the other work he intends to do to consider acting upon the discussion.
Discussing potential pitfalls may be wasted if he is already aware of them, but if he was not, we can point them out before Toady falls into them. Further, there is certainly no harm in pointing them out.
Once again, I made a circle on a map, and made a one-sentence note about how the bridge looked strange. Truly, the most nonsensical thing you have ever heard, am I right?
What Toady needs is discussion about historical research when Toady is trying to aim for historical accuracy, and talks about how players will likely react to changes to gameplay. Players, especially players of games like DF, will
always look for exploits and ways to push the rules to the limits, and it is often difficult to foresee every possible ramification of a change until after you have let the genie out of the bottle. (See: Mermaid Farming.)
What Toady doesn't need are people that make two-word lip-service praise comments at every one of Toady's posts just to act as a smokescreen for every comment they make everywhere else in the forum being thinly veiled griefing or insults of the entire community, so as to either openly or implicitly discourage all forms of discussion that they don't personally approve.
It doesn't matter how much "you are protecting his ego", if you grief potential donators into quitting on the forums, you're doing Toady harm.