Thread drift is like a destruction derby . Suddenly sideways leading to a crash . It’s not a race . Fun to watch the drift . Like golf . Oh that damn ball went another direction.
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spoiler alert thread drift:
I really like the discourse software.
Here is the exception:
The responses are time stamped the first day after that only daily.
When reading through many threads, I scratch my head wondering what all the fuss is about?
If those responses happened minutes apart, the upset makes sense because no turn taking is happening.
When one looks at it as throughout the day perhaps the upset may seem unwarranted.
I think thread drift that reflects the natural course of human interaction is wonderful. I agree that if the OP is still looking for specific information or answers, she/he ought to re-insert the question. Once nudged again, I would hope that if anyone had the needed reply, they’d offer it.
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Thread drift is just the natural process of open, public discussion forums.
If thread drift were not allowed, this place would be like going to Catholic boarding school. With a tunnel-vision, myopic taskmaster as principal.
If the OP wanted to veer the discussion back on-topic, simply redirect and post up the original issue or question.
Live, and let live.
Or, in our case, post and let post.
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Love this I used to be the feared and dreaded givemecarbs on chowhound and enjoyed your posts there. It is my belief that the linear thinkers (the world needs them too) might also be more apt to complain. Not just about thread drift. I may be wrong.
Side discussions are inevitable — and make this place more interesting and fun — most of the time.
I don’t know how much this is about linear thinking vs. expectations of a thread / board and also respect and allowing space for others to participate.
There are threads that seek specific help or information — in those cases, it would be nice if that query was actually answered, both for the OP and for future searches.
In some cases, a community forms around a theme, and a specific thread topic doesn’t even matter, because largely the same people populate all the threads on that theme. To an unfamiliar eye, the same discussion (or debate) is happening over and over again, but hey, maybe that’s what they enjoy, so I wouldn’t call that tangential.
In other cases, some drift is part of the discussion flow of a community that has built up over time (like WFD). But someone new comes in every so often and asks that the thread become more regimented — completely missing that things don’t need to function exactly as they think they “should” — they can just become a part of what’s already there.
This happens in the inverse with new threads occasionally too — someone seeds a discussion, but then doesn’t like the direction “their” thread took. Well, threads flow like conversations in real life — all over the place.
But I do also think there are some posters who prefer a tangential discussion to actual thread topics — you can spot them when there’s little or no contribution to the topic itself, they’re just there because it’s what’s active at the moment, To me those are intentional, not organic, drifts. There’s a better place for that (usually somewhere in Not About Food).
Always good to keep in mind that HO is a community that’s been around for a while, but it’s on all of us to keep it pleasant and fun. Because when it stops being that way, people leave, and then you’re just left talking to yourself, lol.
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More great comments. Thanks for starting this thread Phoenika. Be the change you desire doesn’t really work here but I could be wrong. TANGENT warning. When I joined the lidl nerd community the culture was to disrespect someone who got a great deal at lidl and posted about it. I made it my business to change that along with the excellent and tireless mods. I was pretty vigilant and I took the night shift. Now it’s all congratz and NIce over there. I adore NAF and thanks to whoever started it. Was it you Respectfully?
It’s the immediacy of response - in the heat of the moment, so to speak (and no, plz don’t expect a correlating musical youtube link, I’ll leave that to other posters), that people can get testy or misunderstand things, and often type before letting things settle in their own minds. Instead of stepping back and trying to look at whatever topic at hand from another perspective… which is really what a discussion board is or at least should be about: a different perspective.
If everyone here agreed on all the things all the time, well - it wouldn’t be much of a discussion board.
That said - and @Saregama has hinted at it, different personalities have different posting styles. Some join in a conversation to participate, to maybe even learn… others have their set of opinions & have to be right at all times or simply argue for the sake of arguing. Some people are better at focusing on the topic at hand, others are easily distracted >SQUIRREL<, or think of this site as their personal journal / diary.
In the end, hopefully everyone takes away something valuable for themselves, even if it’s just the fun of discussing random topics with complete strangers 
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Tangents are fine. It’s what happens in real life round the dinner table or at the pub. I’m generally fine with that.
But tangents can become a whole new focus of the thread, rendering the OP meaningless at worst or no longer relevent at best. I can think of a couple of recent threads like that, which no longer interest me and which I’ve now marked as “don’t show again”. And I was the OP of one of them. It’s the forum equivalent of starting to tidy up the kitchen while others continue to chat, or deciding to have an early night from the pub.
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I think it might be a lot more frustrating for the OP when their thread takes on a life of its own, especially when the original post/question is lost in what I like to refer to as ‘white noise.’
For those who merely joined a discussion, there’s thankfully always, always the option of unfollowing/ignoring.
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THAT.
The WFD threads have been thread-drifty since way before HO came into existence.
It’s like a conversation at the Thanksgiving dinner table where you have 25 people there, plus a table of kids.
People haven’t seen each other since the last holiday meal, they’re passing dishes and enjoying the food, catching up, half-listening to other conversations and joining in on occasion, making sure the little kids aren’t throwing peas and mashed potatoes, talking about now surly teenagers who used to throw peas and mashed potatoes, pouring more wine (a LOT more wine for those adults dealing with thrown peas and mashed potatoes), arguing about football teams, cleaning up the dishes, sacking out on the couch after eating too much turkey dinner, drawing with a marker on Uncle Joe’s face while he’s snoring on the couch…
Thread drift. It’s a given. Unless the entire thread’s original purpose is completely shot to shit, just SOB.
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And
That’s probably what I dislike the most. If you’re posting in a thread, at least make some semblance of a response to the OP. But often they don’t, and that’s unfair to the OP, in many cases, especially if they’re asking a specific question. There are some who use a thread as a platform for their brain dump that has little to do with the original post. That’s frustrating to me, and scrolling past copious amounts of blah blah leads me to often leave the thread.
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Came here to say pretty much this. When I open a thread, it’s because I’m interested in what’s being said on that topic, not whether someone randomly remembered this thing their Great Aunt Martha did that one time.
So I don’t mind tangents that branch off. I feel less warmly toward the ones that spring up a half mile away.
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Great Aunt Martha and Uncle Joe have a tendency to dislodge a straight and narrow thread with their antics. 
Well, there appears to be a good catchall thread for those, though, judging from the 1.6k+ posts in What’s on your mind?.
I don’t think anyone goes there expecting to learn about knives, the best way to soft-boil an egg, or recos for their next NOLA vacay… so in a way it’s the perfect dumping ground for all that is peripheral 
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Well put. I agree.
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I see this as well.
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Agreed. But it doesn’t quite catch all. Is my point.
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It seems to quite literally be about what’s on posters’ minds, so who are we to define whether it’s still OT or tangential? 
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The thing about that thread is that the topic itself is OT.
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