Question: It can be difficult to navigate the magnitude of answers available on certain types of posts. These posts usually span multiple pages and by definition hide a lot of information. 

While reading all the answers is a great way to understand the issues, there are posts with 5+ pages of answers. There is no way that most users have read all the answers (Some? Maybe), but most people want to be more efficient when going through these types of posts. 

You don't read a scientific paper first. You read the abstract continue from there. What I am suggesting is an "abstract" for these confusing, and/or controversial posts.

From the last 2 months, these are the posts that come to mind that would benefit from an "abstract" of some kind

* [Upvotes on questions will now be worth the same as upvotes on answers](https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/391250/upvotes-on-questions-will-now-be-worth-the-same-as-upvotes-on-answers?noredirect=1#comment742785_391250)
* [Update: an agreement with Monica Cellio](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/340906/update-an-agreement-with-monica-cellio?cb=1)

**Is there a better way to navigate through all the answers and confusing parts of the post in a way that will allow others to understand the post and answers more clearly?** 

For clarity, this would not apply for your everyday Meta posts. This is only for those posts that produce multiple pages of answers. That heavily reduces which posts this would apply to.

Answer: 
**If there are only two sides, there are (usually) only two answers.**

...therefore...

**If an question has so many answers they fill several pages, there are more than two sides**

There are exceptions, of course, where someone rephrases an answer as a separate one, or when answers are posted simultaneously (like this one), but usually if there is already an answer near enough to someone's own opinion, they will upvote rather than provide their own answer.

The threads you reference have been the subject of a lot of nuanced opinions. They have also been the subject of a bit of cathartic venting. These are fairly unusual cases, and I don't think it makes much sense to develop new functionality directed only at these edge cases.
Based on an answer that I received (a comment), I was able to completely revamp my "solution" to this issue. No new tools needed as the tools are already there; however, it could be more streamlined.

Solution
========

Streamlined "Summary Posts"

I was made aware that the Monica post caused such an issue in the community that people had a hard time understanding the issues and detail at hand. This led to a [summary post](https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/334399/summing-up-the-main-issues-the-story-so-far) being created. This summary post can actually go into so much more detail than a simple "categorization" that I suggested above. 

It could categorize, but maybe that isn't the best idea for each post; maybe it is?? But it can also explain additional details that people might not understand, such as what the Teacher's Lounge is (for this particular example), timelining, or anything else.

Once this "summary post" idea is taken up, the community could create a basic idea of what should and shouldn't go into these posts. Where exceptions could occur. How the community members that don't understand could ask for new details that others could create a full answer for. What type of answers should be CWs. And so on.

Why "Streamlined"
=================

**Edit: This deals more with how the community can create guidelines for these types of summary posts.**

It is important that these summary posts are only for special types of posts that generate large amounts of answers, confusion, or other possible issues. The idea of creating these summary posts would take some time. Five to seven answers is probably way too low to need a summary, but eventually, a point of some kind (confusion, # of answers, etc...) is met and a summary post could be created. 

The creation of the post could be so simple as to just indicate that it is a summary post for the said post or posts (possibly templated or following a format), and the community could add answers or update answers through CW.

Also, you will see in the linked summary post that it ran into issues of being a duplicate. Well, after the community decides on how to deal with these types of summary posts, then there should be far fewer issues.

Summary
=======

So a possible solution to this issue is to use Summary Posts that use the current infrastructure of SE ... "Questions" and Answers. There might be a need to streamline these types of "Questions" but there, technically, doesn't need to be any new tools created. Just a new process or community guideline.