What’s the difference between a hijack and something that’s off topic?
WRS
What’s the difference between a hijack and something that’s off topic?
WRS
I’ll take a guess. Nothing?
As threads and their topics vary, so do the circumstances.
It’s really impossible to say, as threads evolve and change as they are pushed and shaped by the people that contribute to them. It’s very individual to each thread.
If it’s really off topic, it’ll be so blatant that there’s no doubting someone made a mistake. We deal with those accordingly.
Usually we let threads live and die on their own merits . . . wherever that takes them. Drift is inevitable.
your humble TubaDiva
Administrator
Hijacks are one of the things that make this board so fascinating. Watching the ideas whiz and zip and careen and cartwheel and coruscate in a dizzying myriad of directions is a blast.
…and logging on at 8 in the morning to find that someone has correctly used “coruscate” in a sentance (and made it sound perfectly natural) is just the icing on the DopeCake.
(That was a hijack. Or it was off-topic. But see how well it worked into the coruscating flow?)
You’ve just ruined my day.
My personal definition of hijack vs. OT is, a hijack invites further discussion along a different, but related, theme from the OP. An OT comment is generally a standalone comment that doesn’t really invite further comment, and doesn’t really have a lot to do with the subject at hand.
So if an OP is about great restaurants:
La Tuscana is a great restaurant with wonderful atmosphere, if expensive.
<hijack> it seems more prevalent that the quality of a restaurant has a lot to do with the price of its menu these days, does anyone else notice that? </hijack>
OT: The dry cleaner next to La Tuscana, on the other hand, should be avoided at all costs, because they really will “take you to the cleaners”.