Thread drift?

[Jim Kelly]

How much thread drift is permitted? Does it depend on which forum the thread is in? More thread drift in the community forum less thread drift in special topic forums?

My personal feeling is that it's okay, as long as it's cool with the topic starter. I can see how someone who started a topic could get upset if they felt their topic was being hijacked. But even then, a certain amount of thread drift seems okay, as long as the thread eventually drifts back to the main topic.

It's in my nature to drift off topic, but I usually can bring it back to the main topic. And there are some great extended threads that started because of a simple question and then wandered off into a good discussion about other things. So I'd like to think those threads can spontaneously occur.

[Expletive Deleted]

How much thread drift is permitted?

It really has to be a case-by-case thing. It depends on the type of thread (drift in an appreciation thread, a rumbles thread, or something else with a relatively narrow remit is different from drift in a chat thread), the type of drift (natural conversational shift is different from purposeful derailment or posters carrying over a fight from another thread), the subject matter (if a thread drifts into subject matter that's really better suited for it's own thread on a different forum), etc.

[Jim Kelly]

Okay.

Note: Not trying to bump this topic. But a pet peeve of mine is when an OP leaves and never ever responds to the replies to his original post. And then I realized I did the same with this one. Oops.