OP’s do not own their threads. Ideally they craft the best OP they can hoping it’ll grow straight and true. Or maybe they make a slapdash OP, indicating they care little.
But in either case, then they wind it up and set it loose to evolve and grow however it does. They really have, and should have, nearly zero influence over what happens after their OP.
ISTM the more vague and woolly the OP’s topic, the more the digressions are natural and should be welcome. e.g.
“The war in Iran: whaddayathink?” is inherently a wooly topic and the ensuing discussion is either wide-ranging, or is being bansai’ed to death by moderators forced by dumb rules to try to apply a straightjacket to kudzu.
Compare with
“The air raid on al-Bumfuq on 05/10/2026; what are the geopolitical pros and cons?” That’s a topic which in inherently narrow enough that sensible obvious borders can be drawn around it. And that individual posters have some hope of being able to figure out on their own with a reasonable degree of collective consistency. Such that the thread stays mostly on-topic naturally.
This has largely been true up until now though. If the OP is stringently written, and the OP says “I want no discussion of XYZ issue” or other specifics we enforced that seriously. We’re a lot less supportive of post-OP “That’s not what I meant” style meddling especially if said OP takes the discussion off topic themselves.
Human moderation is inherently squishy, we admit.
Seriously, no trouble, this is new to you guys, and we’ve been trying to work out the kinks for months. But the pain and pressure points aren’t going to reveal themselves without use. And as seen upthread, we’ll consider positive feedback and constructive criticism as it evolves.
The big thing is that yes, as @LSLGuy points out, playing whack-a-mole (snerk) with loose OP’s is can be a battle in which nearly everyone looses and everyone has hard feelings. This option asks more of everyone, but especially the OP of new threads.
Which, again, entirely IMHO is what the late Jonathan_Chance was expecting. But we’ll never know (unless anyone knows a good Necromancer or verifiable Medium).
The trouble is that the 2 options are “this restaurant is allowed to poison people” and “this restaurant only sells unambiguous health food” when what most people want is “this restaurant also serves hamburgers”
I disagree. @LSLGuy has got it right. OPs don’t own their threads, but as @ParallelLines points out, if an OP takes the time to clearly articulate in their OP what they wish to discuss and not discuss, we will do our best to enforce it as requested.
What we are not going to do is permit OPs to say, “Well, I want strict hijack moderation up to now, but then I want you to stop moderating for hijacks.” It’s an all-or-nothing choice for a reason. If this is what you’re after, then I’m sorry, you’re someone we may have to disappoint. Mods have to have clear understandings among themselves about what is allowed and what isn’t.
If someone takes a moment to say in an OP, “I don’t have a problem with brief hijacks,” we will do our best to honor that request. But few do. Many OPs are as vague as they can be, and we are left to try and interpret the “perfect” way to moderate hijacks to the satisfaction of many participants.
I have always been pretty tolerant of brief hijacks. Other mods aren’t. We’re human, and you have to allow for that, too.
As I previously explained, we are not going to allow the restaurant to poison people. We will continue to moderate HT threads for hijacks that are made solely to poison the well. As for serving health food, we’ve always served hamburgers. Put some effort into your OP, and there’s a good chance you’ll get pretty much what you order.
All this new approach does is give posters more flexibility to have the threads they want.
“Fish sticks and personal pizzas, none of that other stuff!”
“What about fries?!”
There’s a wide range of poster desires, often with overlap but not always. I appreciate that some people see this as a binary choice, but I don’t think any community can have the rules customized to every single personal preference, some of which can and do conflict. So now we basically have three choices: HT threads, “traditional” threads, and “traditional” threads with careful OPs. The last seems to be closest to what you’re looking for. We’re trying to give more choices here, but we’re all part of the solution, and that includes posters operating in good faith.