Catching and then *correcting* yourself on Hijacks/Off-topic posts

I appreciate that several posters have been trying to catch themselves when contributing to hijacks and off-topic comments recently. But this often takes the forms of a single clause at the end of a post saying “Oh, I didn’t see the moderation until now” or “ETA - just saw the moderation, please feel free to hide”.

In general (!) if you have time to add the clause, or are in the edit window, you could have corrected this yourselves. Alternately, if you are uncertain if the post (or a part of) was/was not on topic, you can do the hiding yourself.

On a Windows device, either in the initial post or during the time period where you can edit it, select the area of text (generally by highlighting the sequence with your mouse). Once selected, go to the (+) icon in the toolbar of the message, and select “>hide details”. That will hide the highlighted text in a drop-down box. Feel free to replace the default “summary” title with something more descriptive, such as “Possibly off topic comment on XYZ”.

It’s a moment’s work, and shows consideration to your fellow posters, and far faster than having an accident and getting one of the mods to fix it. Please and thank you.

I think this is also a nice compromise. A lot of times, those posts stick around because someone doesn’t want to delete what they took the time to say, and yet also don’t think it warrants a new thread.

Hiding it discourages discussion on it, but still allows the poster to feel their ideas were seen and their effort was not entirely wasted. I know that fits better with my own personal psychology.