I’ve been modded – not as in warned, as in noted or included in general in a moderator comment – for hijacking. I thought the mods were probably right; I’d lost track of what the thread topic was.
And I don’t spend huge amounts of time worrying about whether what I’m posting is a hijack or not; but I’ve only had that happen rarely, and when it did happen there was nothing horrible about it, I just quit answering in the hijack and that was all there was to it. You may be worrying too much. Or you may just hate staying on topic, I don’t know; in which case P&E may be the wrong forum for you.
If we didn’t have moderating for topics in P&E, much of it would shortly become nothing but an argument over (currently) the Middle East among a handful of people; and the rest would be wild speculation with no way to find the breaking news buried in there someplace.
Which is presumably why it doesn’t get warnings and suspensions and bannings, but a modnote or even less.
It confounds me how upset some people get over a modnote.
I don’t think breaking news should ever be in P&E just for that reason.
I’m not convinced the M&P is where it should be, either.
What you gonna do?
Umm? Maybe don’t count on the Dope for your news. It seems like a contest who can post it first anyway. That’s why we get dupes so often.
As far a hijacking. I’m one who has random thoughts on subjects that I never think are world shaking or meter changing. I’m certain the larger world cares not my thoughts on a given subject.
So …I get hijack noted some.
Clearly I think it’s mostly an educational note.
It has turned harsh for no reason other than people like to beat down on persons. For their own gratification.
It turns into ammunition for peoples baser feelings on a particular poster.
And before you say this is me trying to make this about me, reread the OP.
This is my feeling as well, just wanted to have @thorny_locust’s two points get a better +1 and amplify.
The first extra problem with hijacks to me is that they often get down to 2-3 posters drowning out the rest of the thread with their little subtangent. If it’s 4-5 posts, sure, who cares, but it’s often far more than that, and I start tuning out what was to me an interesting thread. This requires no malice, mind you, but we have plenty of posters with axes to grind.
The second point was my understanding as well, sometimes I’ll post to a side topic in threads with less stringent moderation than P&E and GD, and then say something like “Back to the OP’s points though” and follow up with a secondary thought, which serves to address the tangent and get back to the OP. A nudge, not an order.
Frankly, if the mods are okay with it AND the poster invites a specific “looser structure” I don’t see anything wrong with that, but suggest than in addition to the tag, there be a warning in the title as well to prevent extra, unneeded flags.
I think the tag for hijacks - not necessarily welcome (as most threads aren’t MMP) but better tolerated - is an idea worth exploring. If someone wants more freedom in their thread to allow digressions, that’s fine.
I would suggest something in the title itself, as tags are easy to overlook.
What we don’t want is every thread wandering across every possible topic. But a limited trial could work.
But, there’s no rule against having a serious discussion in a forum other than GD or P&E. Other forums have more relaxed rules about hijacks. If an OP wants a more meandering discussion of, say, Trump’s chances of winning, it can already be started in the Pit.
In general I am sympthetic to @Aeschines points, but overall I do not favor the change they suggest.
Ref this:
The people in the thread who are continuing the digression are evidently having a fine time. But note that for every poster posting there are a dozen or 50 who are just reading. We have exactly zero info about how those people feel about the digression.
And then there are the active posters within the thread who are not participating in the digression. We also don’t know what they think of the digression until / unless one of them posts something, perhaps along the lines of “Hi folks! Returning to our regularly scheduled topic, I think …”
Not quite. IMO what they are really saying (if not being disingenuous) is “My digression adds value to the overall conversation and is smaller than a true hijack which is about wrecking the thread, not adding seasoning (or levity or snark) to it.”
I for one think a certain amount of asides are fine. I chose the term “digression” above very deliberately. Hijacking is a crime. A digression is not. A bit like how the music industry thinks every example of a consumer copying music is capital-P “Piracy”. Nonsense. But they have eventually persuaded a hell of a lot of citizens to do their bidding by misusing the term piracy for legit (or at least harmless) one-on-one copying.
IMO SDMB (both culture and TPTB) has elevated (or debased) the term “Hijacking” to almost meaninglessness. IMO a comment about a closely related topic that is already intimately connected out in the real world with the titular thread topic is (usually) not a hijack. It’s a digression that probably enhances the thread overall.
I for one would be far happier to have the mods crush tit-for-tat “No, you misunderstood me” BS battles after the very first tit than I would have them modding comments on tangential but well-connected topics.
As one of the mods pointed out upthread , setting aside the genuinely malicious post intended to vandalize the thread, we can’t know whether an aside becomes a useful seasoning digression or is a distracting hijack until after it’s had time to gather steam or not. And by the time it’s 10 or 15 posts long, interspersed with some non-hijacky posts, some of which refer to content in the hijacking posts, then unraveling that into it’s own thread post facto is difficult and the result is almost always unsatisfying. So it is perhaps better to emphasize prevention than cure.
And I appreciate that, as I think do many others. The complaints about “overly strict” hijack moderation are more about those times when a single tangential post immediately triggers a mod note, or sometimes a mod note is posted when there’s been no “hijack” at all, in what is apparently a well-meaning attempt to preempt one from occurring. I once got a mod note (and a thread ban, too, though the ban was later withdrawn) for one single post that I thought was reasonably on topic, or at worst, on a closely related tangent. These sorts of things do strike me as a bit overzealous.
I agree, and this is another very good point. What exactly is a hijack? I think a practical definition is either (a) one or two posts that are completely off topic and clearly add nothing to the conversation, or (b) a digression that has meandered on some tangent long enough that it risks taking the thread off its intended subject. I don’t think anyone would have a problem with those being moderated. The complaints are about people being afraid to post even a single aside for fear of being reprimanded.
If I wanted to start a thread or make a post that might be considered offensive or overly controversial, that would be appropriate. But if it’s necessary to get prior permission to make a single tangential remark, that’s just silliness, and in that sort of environment it’s much easier to just do nothing at all. This is exactly what some critics have meant by “stifling conversation”.
No one gets moderated for hijacks in the Pit, the most that happens is that a substantial digression gets pulled out into its own thread. And modest hijacks are generally allowed in IMHO, and usually allowed in MPSIMS, except in breaking news threads. (Again, we might pull a lengthy digression into its own thread, if it develops organically.) In general, we try to moderate IMHO and MPSIMS based on what the OP seems to want, which can be a pretty loose discussion.
Personally, when i start a political-ish thread, i tend to do so in the pit in large part because i prefer the more open structure allowed there.
I’ve often said I think the Pit is underutilized and I agree with this. I’ve engaged in many very productive discussions in the Pit and it’s wonderful to not have to watch everything I say there.
Actually you are making this about you. The OP is referring specifically to the tight moderation of hijacks in P&E and GD, which is a rule put in place a few years ago by Jonathan Chance. They aren’t referring to your tendency to hijack threads regardless of the forum or topic.
In other words, this thread is about GD/P&E rules, not individual behaviors. The question at hand is whether or not those rules should be relaxed.
For the record, I don’t participate much in GD or P&E, but in general I’m opposed to a change in the moderation of hijacks since that rule was put into place for a good reason. If you allow a more relaxed and “freer discussion” as per the OP, then you’re right back where you started where the regular GD/P&E folks are going to complain that debates (the entire purpose of the forums) are difficult or impossible due to the subject always getting hijacked.
If you want to have a freer discussion, take it to IMHO, and clearly indicate that you are looking for a freer and more open discussion and not a strict debate. Trying to have a non-debate thread in a debate forum seems kind of odd and more than a bit off-topic to me.
That’s not responsive to the original point, which was not about controversy or offensiveness, but about posters being afraid to make a single innocent tangential remark, to which you suggested contacting a mod first. That’s not a practical suggestion. It simply results in those posts not being made at all, and the conversation perhaps being the poorer for it.
You currently have something like six Trump related threads going on just in P&E. (Latest rally, “runup”, “confused?”, “how he wins”, effectively the “stop panicking” one, and arguably a few others.) There are at least two basically identical threads just to guess at results. You are going to get some thread drift because these are all very much the same thing. Frankly, a half dozen similar threads can be more annoying than one omnibus where nothing can be a hijack.
, so true.