Tangential conversations are allowed. I don’t see any way it can be stopped without completely stifling all conversation. Hijacking a thread with another related or unrelated topic is not allowed. The line between tangential conversation and hijacking is not bright and can not be completely defined. It will be moderated differently in each forum and it will be driven by context. GQ will probably be more strict. MPSIMS not so much. I have not see an increase in either complaints of hijacks or complaints of junior modding.
The OP does not own the thread. They can not moderate a thread just because they started it. They can make attempts to keep a thread on track with suggestions or clarifications of their intent. If they see a rule being broken they should report it.
About half a dozen posters, including me, took that thread about the Amazon health care consortium into a more general discussion about UHC and the failures of the current private-insurance model. Whether that could be considered a “hijack” or a natural and legitimate evolution of the discussion is a matter of opinion. The OP seemed to be fine with it until you came along. Your contribution was to ridicule the idea that there was anything wrong with the current system, and then somehow get caught up in a digression about whether or not insurance plans paid for flu shots, as if that proved your point. That was when the OP gently called you out for the hijack.
If your claim is that insurance plans always cover a certain service, and a poster has personal experience with many instances where they don’t, that isn’t an “anecdote”, it’s proof that you’re wrong.
I agree with everything you’ve said. The problem is, as I see it, that a poster’s cries of “stop hijacking this thread” comes across as junior modding, and it’s often not moderated as such.
No, that wasn’t my claim. The poster in question claimed that his family’s ACA insurance didn’t cover flu immunizations. I posted a cite to healthcare.gov that showed said immunizations are covered 100%, without a copay.
I did not accuse him of lying. Maybe he was uninformed, maybe he misunderstood something, or heck, maybe he was ripped off by the provider.
Which is more authoritative, the government website, or one random person’s anecdote on the internet?
Speaking of hijacks - let’s not relitigate the underlying issues that spawned this thread. This one is about hijacks. Ironic I know.
Hijacks are not a bright line assessment. We generally like to keep discussion at least semi related to a thread topic. Of course threads can develop organically and that’s okay too.
What my preference is for avoiding hijacks is for folks to focus on substantive responses and disagreements, and leaving aside trial matters of little import.
I looked through the rules for GD, and I don’t see any rule against hijacking. How can someone be junior modding if they are asking another poster to stop doing something that isn’t actually against the rules?
To use a similar example, some people in GD just ask a thousand questions and never actually debate anything. Others have pointed this out, do you think it is junior modding? What rule are these junior mods “enforcing?”
In the Memo thread, I think it’s important to point out that I did not tell you to stop hijacking the thread. I told you I wouldn’t continue to respond to your choice to hijack. Since you were not responding in any way to the OP, I felt this was a fair characterization of what you were doing.
I also encouraged others to not respond. But I never told you or anyone else what to do, only said what I was going to do and what I hoped others would do. If that had fallen under the heading of ‘junior modding,’ I am sure an actual moderator would have let me know.
As a matter of best practice, I generally try to avoid posting tangential replies within the first 10 responses or so. Sometimes I refrain until page 2 or 4.
I ask myself, “How does my comment relate to the central question of the OP?” I also try to avoid attack via implication: if I believe that the premise of the OP falls short, I say so, rather than simply disagreeing with a sub-sub-claim.
To avoid mod attention, I follow moderator instructions. But that’s just a matter of not being a jerk.
ETA: Pst, D’Anconia. Hijacking isn’t a rules violation. Insults are a rules violation. Hate speech is a rules violation. Those are different things. Heck, saying something is a hijack isn’t an accusation IMHO.
Hijacking can sometimes serve a thread and sometimes not. Whether it does is entirely in the eyes of the moderator reviewing it. A habit of hijacking threads - whether with a tangential issue or a monomaniacal focus on one particular issue - is more likely to be sanctioned because it makes clear that the hijacker is not actually interested in the topic of the thread but instead wants to derail it to serve some personal agenda. But that’s a judgement call on our parts.
Insults and such? Well, no one wants to see those, do they?
In my several years of experience being a moderator, posters bring out the ‘biased by politics’ thing when they know they’re in the wrong. I speak as a man who’s been accused of having socialist AND fascist politics over the course of my moderating career. So good luck with that.
As for your accusation that someone’s disobeying a moderator instruction in this thread, I admit to being confused. The only instruction I see is Bone saying that this thread is not for rehashing the health care debate from the other thread. I see no one breaking that.
