Then, a bunch of posts follow, none of which attempt to answer the question. The OP gets frustrated with the off-topic answers and asks (in a badly-phrased way) that the thread get focused. This gets him a warning from tomndebb
Nowhere does tomndebb make an attempt to steer the responses to actual answers to the question in the OP.
Then, a bunch of posts follow, none of which attempt to answer the question. The OP gets frustrated with the off-topic answers, and gets petulant and junior-modish "For the third effin’ time, take the anti-Palin crap elsewhere, damn it! If you’ve got nothing, POST NOTHING. "
After a while, tomndebb gives a warning, not to the OP, but to the posters who are not sticking to the topic in the OP.
It’s clear that the warnings in the above two cases are different, so may not be 100% comparable, but they do share one thing in common: They deal with an attempt by the OP to steer the conversation towards a certain topic or certain type (e.g. no joke replies). In the first case, tomndebb seems to not concern himself with the OP’s complaint about the direction of the thread, in the latter he does seem concerned with it.
So, what’s the overall conclusion: How much control does the OP in a GD thread have on the direction of the thread? (in terms of participants, content, and or type of content, e.g. joke responses)
Yes, he did, but it’s still a fact that overall he helped you steer the conversation to more legit answers to the OP (which is a good thing IMO, but the mods don’t always do this)
I told the poster in the first example that he could not dictate who posted to his thread. That is not “steering” the thread.
Despite that mistaken impression of what happened in the first thread, I will agree that I have made efforts to keep threads following the point that an OP has sought to discuss and I will address that.
Hijacks tend to fall into to two categories: organic and not organic. An organic hijack is one in which a point of discussion raises its own issues that need to be resolved before the primary discussion can move forward. Hijacks that are arguments over a separate comment that is not part of the OP’s discussion are not organic to a thread. If a thread is in its early stages and a not organic hijack erupts, I am liable to ask that the participants take it to a separate thread and not derail the original discussion. A hijack that erupts on the 21st page of a thread that has swung wildly around multiple topics is not as likely to see any Moderator intervention.
How these guidelines play out in real life can vary considerably.
AS an OP just this past week, I did the same thing. I wanted to know specifically about coverture and its relationship to “traditional” marriage under the law, and when the millionth Prop 8/SSM debate broke out, I asked for it to stop or be taken elsewhere so as to not bury the issue at hand.
It stopped, but the issue at hand was apparently not as interesting as I hoped it might be. Better to spout bromides I guess.
I believe that this problem stems for Tomndebb’s custom title. You see, the Mods and Rockers used to be two different subcultures that would frequently engage in combat against each other back in the day. Because of this conflict in his title, it often carries over to mod type decisions and should not be taken seriously.
FWIW, I’ve always thought that an OP could make reasonable requests (at least fairly early on in a thread) in an effort to avoid “joke” replies or try and stave off an early potential hijack. After a couple of pages, though, it all becomes rather moot…
If the OP requests (in the first post) that a thread take a certain slant or avoid a certain slant, that’s usually to be respected. Anyone disagreeing can start a different thread and post a link. Examples would be: “Let’s focus on the European side of this…” or “Please keep anecdotes out, I want facts…”
If the original poster who started the thread doesn’t specify at first, and then comes in later to say, “Wait, wait, I meant to say that we should avoid math-theoretic responses” … well, I guess it will depend on the forum, the mod, the circumstances, but my personal view would be that it’s too late. The thread has gone how it has gone, and you can’t rewind the trouser legs of time.
The OP can’t put just any restrictions they want. “No Democrats should post to this” or “only positive comments about the deceased” will usually not be upheld by the mods. ((ASIDE: We’ve long established that obituary/memorial threads about celebrities cannot be restricted to only speaking well of the dead. Such threads can be kept positive if the deceased is a relative/friend of the OP.))
Administration of this is always going to be a judgement call. When is a side topic just a tangent and when is it a hijack? It’s often hard to say. For instance, two or three posts on a tangent might be acceptable, but ten or twelve may be too many. There’s no magic number, I’m just making the point that there can be “little tangents” because short, or “major hijacks” because long. And, in many cases, no way to tell until the thing has spun out.
So, if someone was going to post something on a slightly controversial topic, and there’s a poster with a history of posting to that topic, making outrageous claims, and the thread gets completely derailed and turns into an all-about-them kind of deal, the OP couldn’t say “PosterX, please do not post in this thread”?
Sure, they could SAY it, but they shouldn’t expect the Mods to enforce it and they shouldn’t get all bent if PosterX does, in fact, post to the thread.
The problem with a poster telling another poster to stay out of a thread is that such a demand is an open invitation to a fight. There have been a very few rare occasions when a staff member has told a poster to stay out of a thread, (and those occasions have generally been met with howls of outrage from other posters), but there is no occasion when a poster–even an OP to a thread–will be permitted to dictate who can post to “his” or “her” thread.
That’s quite the analogy!