How off topic is off topic?

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I am not trying to be a whiney brat but just so that I know because obviously I don’t (maybe it’s just me) how off topic is considered off topic?

Per a debate that I opinionated on http://northeastshooters.com/viewtopic.php?t=1321 we were reminded that we became off topic. Yes I agree we did head off topic but in my opinion it was a natural wander.

Now Per thread http://northeastshooters.com/viewtopic.php?t=1408 the topic was clear to me that these were professionals and geologist who knew that a disaster would eventually happen.

Now I really wanted to post about my Nostradamus comment in jacobtowne’s thread , because it did click in after I read the word “Prophetic”, But this clearly was not about Nostradamus so I was I asked if I meant to reply to his thread.

I don’t want to make tension between me and other posters or mods. I really love this place and I think that Derek and the mods do a great job keeping this place “clean”. I love for the fact that we all get together as a group and are able to discuss our views the way we feel about guns, politics, other stuff and still have time for funny jokes, pictures and so on. I just want to know how off topic is off topic.

Respectfully,

B.J.
 
OK, the following is only ONE Moderator's opinion about "OT" and "thread drift issues". As a group, the Mods have NOT discussed this at length to come to a "single conclusion" on these issues.

- OT in general - If most posts in a forum are OT, the natural reaction from many forum users are to "drift off" and not return, as that wasn't why they signed up in the first place. I have seen this first hand in numerous eLists that I belong to and we lost a lot of very good, knowledgeable people that way. I'll name names (to a degree) here:
* There has been an AR15-L eList (NOT anything like AR15.com forums) that has been around for a very long time, I've been a member since 1998 (long before we had forums as we know it today). A lot of absolute experts on the AR15 dropped off of that eList due to OT practically taking it over. Eventually they created a MISC-L eList to try to divert the OT posts, but it was too late, those that left never came back.
* I've also been a member of the C&R FFL eList since 1999 and the same thing has happened there, even done to creating a separate eList for OT topics and losing a number of real historians on C&Rs.

- If left unchecked, OT can kill these forums as well.

- Unlike eLists (unless someone archives old posts) where you have to be a member at the time a post is made or you can never see that info later, forums lets new members peruse all prior posts (unless they get purged by forum mgmt after set time to conserve disk space) to find info that they missed before they joined the forum.

- Searching is an important key to finding old info that might be valuable or that you are specifically looking for. This does NOT work real well if the Subject line isn't descriptive or if a thread has drifted OT to something totally different. Therefore, I'm in favor of "self policing" to keep OT thread drift to a minimum.

- OT topics should clearly be labeled as such and kept to the topic at hand. Makes for an orderly and neat forum.

- OT topics should be in their own special OT forum as opposed to scattered all over the forums. This allows those interested to read them, while those that dislike OT can avoid a specific forum and not decide to leave us completely.

As a Moderator I feel obligated to look at almost every post here and it takes a lot of time. Neat and orderly helps me do the job more efficiently and I certainly appreciate that if people make that effort.
 
As simply one more voice, I'd suggest that we reach the stage where one can pull up an entire page of posts and not see a single one that even obliquely refers to the original topic, then things have gone too far. One possible way to deal with this issue is for the next person who wants to post to the OT sub-thread to start a new thread with reference links in both the old and new threads.

Ken
 
Type0, I actually didn't go to your links before replying . . . so here's an addendum (I just took a look at the links).

Classifieds should be left "relatively pure", keeping questions/remarks directly related to the item being bought/sold/traded. Muddying those waters with OT really tends to piss off the OP, and justifiably so because s/he is trying to buy/sell/trade something and anything that masks the purpose of the post hurts his/her efforts.
 
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