Can we implement some solution to the thread hijacking issue that plagues many SDMB threads?
The latest is this one, which as of this writing has 114 posts and only about 5 of them devoted to answering the OP’s question. The remaining ones are arguing about what “direct report” means.
It’s obvious that side discussions such as these are of high interest to a lot of people, so maybe the best thing to do is allow the discussion to continue elsewhere, leaving the poor original thread alone.
Ideally, I’d like to see something akin to Wikipedia’s “Talk” page that accompanies each entry, which allows people to discuss issues without polluting the main entry.
Some possible solutions
[ul]
[li]Create a “Meta” forum, where people can discuss about other threads. [/li][LIST]
[li]e.g if IMHO has a thread called “Help with sewing”, Meta can have a discussion called “Help with sewing” that talks about the IMHO thread itself, and leaves all the actual sewing help posts in the original IMHO thread.[/li][/ul]
[li]If vBulletin has a feature that enables a “talk page” or “sidebar page” for each thread, enable it.[/li][li]If the above possibilities are not possible, let’s give Mods the power & directive to delete all posts that are not about the topic in the OP and are ‘meta’, e.g. what word the OP used to describe something and how wrong it is.[/li][/LIST]
Other solutions?
We should have some solution, because in the current state of affairs, nitpicking morons derail too many threads.