Forum Issue: off-topic comment management?

Seairth

I don't know that this is an "issue", per se, since the prior forum also didn't handle this (to my knowledge).  However, since this a new software package, I was wondering if VF had any solutions for managing off-topic comments.  What I would most like to see is to have such comments move to a separate thread.  Their content is still often worth reading, but they otherwise dilute conversation of the primary topic of a thread.
Thoughts?

Heater.

Some  forums have an entire "off topic" subsection where whole threads that don't seem to have any relevance to anything else on the forum get moved. Assuming that are not otherwise undesirable and get deleted.
Of topic comments that arrive within an otherwise good thread are a bit more tricky, where would you move them to. How would they make any sense at all by themselves, or mixed up with others at random.
Sometimes "off topic is tolerated" we end up with two or more threads of conversation going on with in the one actual forum thread. How to tease that apart sensibly?
  

Seairth

Of topic comments that arrive within an otherwise good thread are a bit more tricky, where would you move them to. How would they make any sense at all by themselves, or mixed up with others at random.
Sometimes "off topic is tolerated" we end up with two or more threads of conversation going on with in the one actual forum thread. How to tease that apart sensibly?
  

Exactly.  So I was wondering if VF had any moderation tools for this.
If nothing else, it would be nice to spawn a new thread instead of add a comment.  This would still require the original OT poster to be proactive, but it would be more likely to occur if the effort were trivial.

mindrobots

As a community, we are very bad at hijacking threads and get distracted and sidetracked easily with little respect for the original poster's intent. I include my self in this group often and will try better to stay on subject, respect the original poster and help to keep the community focused.

If it doesn't support the original topic and or encourages others to stray off topic, please post your thoughts in another thread. It can get very frustrating when you are working on a problem, looking for some answers and get totally unrelated comments sprinkled through your thread.

I think all we can do is take make a personal effort to do better and as a community try to help police things and not encourage each other to stray.

Phil Pilgrim (PhiPi)

In any conversation, tangents frequently occur. Such tangents often lead to interesting topics of their own. In the past, a friendly reminder from a moderator to either stay on topic or start another thread has been enough to manage the issue, and I think that would be adequate going forward. IOW, I don't see it as a major unsolved problem.
-Phil

Genetix

The forums are usually self-moderating but things do get heated and personal sometimes.

erco

As a community, we are very bad at hijacking threads and get distracted and sidetracked easily with little respect for the original poster's intent...


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