Splitting threads

[Refus de Sejour]

There's been a few complaints recently about threads going off-topic, "derailing," as it were. I agree, it can be very annoying when a thread on a specific author or book suddenly explodes into a debate on postmodernism, or politics, or what-not.

On the other hand, when someone raises a point about postmodernism, or politics (or what-not), it is understandable that someone else might want to respond to them. What to do?

The James Randi Educational Forum, which appears to use the same forum template as this one, has a policy whereby a moderator is able to split a thread that has gone off-track, shifting the wayward posts to what is effectively a new thread under it's own title. Would it be possible to implement such a policy here? I am aware that this would increase the moderators' workload, and fully understand if they dislike the idea.

 

[Stewart]

I've always thought that a thread that goes off-topic is just two on-topic threads waiting to be split. If a thread needs split for this reason, just report it and I'll get around to reviewing and splitting it.

 

[Eric]

Like anyone else, I am tempted, especially when replying to someone who is already off-topic, to continue in the new vein.

But ideally, as there is virtually no practical limit to the number of threads, it does no harm to stick to the subject of the original rubric or title.

What irritates me most is not when the thread separates in two clearly definable directions, in which case you can just dump the posts of topic A and topic B in two new threads. It is when, right in the middle of a serious discussion, someone asks an awkward but interesting question, and the henhouse goes all aflutter and people who don't want to answer start a sort of "cootchy-coo, aren't you lovely, have you got a big one, I don't half fancy you (though I've never seen you)" type of quasi-hilarious thread-spoiler dialogue. (Actually, as the ladies tend to behave themselves in this respect, I should term it a "cockhouse".)

I like humour, so that the thread doesn't become stultifyingly straitlaced. But humour is funnier when it applies to the actual stuff of the thread, picking up on what other people have said.

I've noticed one positive development: there is a reduction in the supercilious one-liners by people who cannot, or dare not, actually debate any issue, but like the three-word put-down used at random, and no doubt composed with great intelligence at three o'clock in the morning.

People who write three lines of irrelevancies without the use of capital letters, and just for ego-kicks, make one wonder whether Stalinism would not have its uses as a means of policing the unruly louts of narcissism. Typos are forgiveable, but serial drunkenly rambling loonies are less comme il faut.

So if you want to start a thread on the ?sthetics of buttocks, following Yoko Ono as the Great Inspirer, then by all means do so. But if we are discussing "Madame Bovary", and her buttocks are not mentioned once in the novel, then please start another thread, rather than spoil the Flaubertian one.