@Smapti - I specifically am being more aggressive in this thread as a result of the moderation difficulties in the ICE shootings thread in which you picked up the recent warning.
I don’t think I’m going to be alone in seeing the pattern: a heavily emotionally charged political thread, lots of slowly updating news, and tons of sub/side topics springing up in the lack of definitive information.
In that thread, we (the collective mods) allowed a fair bit of topic drift, which when we tried to rein it in, got a lot of pushback, and resulted in a nearly endless stream of mod notes, which were, collectively ignored or forgotten until we finally started handing out warnings.
So for this new thread, I at least have been quite active (IRL permitting) in trying to keep it on track, trying to prevent the situation in the ICE shooting thread from rearing it’s ugly head again.
As for the specific hijack, I can fully grant your intent was, as stated in this OP -
But look at that entire statement - you’re sharing something you think Eric1 would like. That’s cool, but it’s NOT about the current conflict. It’s perhaps tangentially related, in terms of general attitudes as @Moriarty asserted (though a pair of specific individuals interaction isn’t exactly a demographic trend), but what his comments miss is that we’ve had the first OT/tangential post, then Eric1’s response, then your follow up and then if unmoderated, a full blow sidetrack. I’m not ascribing any willfulness in trying to drag it off topic, but it absolute was contributing to a substantial distraction.
But this result shouldn’t be a surprise - your own cites of the heavy moderation in thread works against you. We were moderating for sidetracks, sidejacks, and hijacks EARLY, which should be a very strong indication we were taking it seriously - not getting warnings for the first few was our (more or less usual) consideration that we knew this topic would be challenging, but that you needed to stop. It should not be a surprise that later efforts to take the thread off-topic after all the mentions you cited wouldn’t pull more severe moderation.
By my count, there had already been four (!) mod notes at that point about various off-topic posts in roughly 24 hours. There’s always a tendency if we don’t @ you by name in a mod-note to think it doesn’t apply to you, but notes are frequently used to address problems we moderators see in a thread, even if we’re sometimes using specific posters/posts to emphasize the point.
Lastly - you discuss @What_Exit moderating the thread about not being a “breaking-news” thread, but seem to miss a different clause in that mod-note:
“As long as it doesn’t become a distraction” is the clause you should pay attention too. The back and forth between you and Eric1 absolutely qualified. Again, not ascribing ill intent, but it was becoming a distraction.