Some of the most interesting threads here have been interesting because of a hijack that took off.
Some nitpicking is useful.
Needless nitpicking is the work of assholes.
I guess what would work best is self-policing - monitor nitpicks like you monitor correcting typos. If someone typed “teh” instead of “the,” for the love of all that’s holy, let it go. When someone makes a typo that makes you laugh, by all means point it out for all of us. 
If a nitpick isn’t really adding anything to the discussion, just let it go, man.
Johnny, my friend, you are not alone. It irritates the living shit out of me. I think I shall calculate the percentage of threads that devolve into asinine nitpickery. If you were making bets, where would you place the over/under? I’d say 21.
People who want to derail a discussion or deflect a point but have no way to rebut your content will usually concentrate their attacks on a minor error in speech or your tone of voice.
How many times have you brought up an issue at work, school or in another venue only to have your perfectly valid point completely discounted and dismissed because the other party decided to concentrate on “the delivery”? How many times has this been effective, as your teacher/boss/leader decides that it is easier to lecture you on your tone of voice/the words you used/the way you said something, than actually address the issue you raised?
So bottom line in a forum like this: People with nothing to add but their own demands for attention are quite happy to see if they can get it from you. Don’t give it to them. Ignore their posts and keep to the topic of the thread.
I sure wish I knew the thought processes of someone like this. What possible gain could someone have for it? (Vanity? Ego?)
Attention.
Control.
“Victory”
Stopping the Discussion Cold. (What better way if you don’t like the discussion or where you believe it will ultimately end, than to hijack control via minutae?)
Ultimately it comes down to the power to manipulate others.
Had enough of this crap in my life in the past before I woke up and realized what it was all about, and then chose not to give these people that power. Doesn’t always work in group settings, because other people still get wrapped up in it and you can’t always get them back on track. Especially those in power over you. If they follow the false path, you’re pretty much fucked.
For an example of this used to derail a rightful issue in a work setting;
I was a Security Supervisor. John was an older guy who “pretended” to have a hearing issue. Amazingly, he would hum along to a very quiet radio 10 feet away, while blatantly ignoring people speaking very loudly right next to him. One day we were putting employees through the metal detector. My job was to inspect lunch boxes and packages, while John’s job was to wand people down if they set off the metal detector.
John stood at the end, humming and staring at the ceiling, ignoring the metal detector and allowing the employees who set it off to just walk out the door. I called his name several times, getting louder each time. I didn’t want to scream at the top of my lungs with employees between us, so I waved my hand in the air while calling his name to get his attention.
He filed a complaint against me because I had “demeaned” him in front of the employees. I countered that the man kept blatantly ignoring his job and staring at the damned ceiling - on this and many other occassions. That I had already complained about him more than once and was ready to have the guy removed from the site for it.
I was brought into a “disciplinary meeting” with my boss and our Account Manager. Their first solution was that I should stop the employees (something I wasn’t allowed to do), walk over, tap John on the shoulder (unwanted physical contact) and ask him if he was ok and ask him to resume doing his job. Sure, this is somehow less demeaning. :rolleyes: No, I’m not touching him.
Their next solition was that I should stop doing my job, walk over, take the wand out of his hand (!!!) and start doing his job right in front of him. Oh sure, grabbing something out of his hand, then standing right in front of him in the doorway and doing his job isn’t demeaning and can’t be construed as assault, right?
But the point is that the man was in big trouble for not doing his job and ignoring any direction to resume doing it, but by filing a complaint, turned the entire incident into a question of my supervision and what I should have done.
Fortunately, they did remove him from the post, but unfortunately, it was because a man who was within inches of being fired asked to be moved elsewhere because I was picking on him by expecting him to pay attention and do his damned job.
Likewise with the derailing of discussions over inconsequential matters. If you address them, then they win and you lose, because you move away from the desired topic of conversation. If you get angry, then they win in spades, because YOU are the one displaying the negative emotions and unfortunately, all too many bystanders and authority figures will then concentrate on the error of YOUR ways rather than the relatively minor violation that caused it (ie, YOU get Mod warnings). Therefore, the best way to deal with these things is to completely ignore them, refuse to address them and keep laser focused on the topic or matter at hand. Eventually they’ll lose interest because no one is engaging them.
The term guacamole comes from the Nahuatl word for avocado, plus the Spanish word for sauce. Really, shouldn’t it be translated as ‘Avocado sauce’ in English?
If only I knew a linguist.
The recent U-Boat thread was very similar, in that the U-boat question occupied about half of the thread, and the negative negative grammar question occupied the other half.
In that thread, even though I made the grammatical error, most people understood what I said (or tried to say): That WWII subs did not submerge for ‘weeks at a time’. That I indicated they needed to surface to recharge their batteries made that clear, I think. (I even mentioned the German Schnorkel, which allowed them to run their diesels while submerged.) Though my syntax was incorrect, the meaning was clear. Someone pointed out the error, and I saw what I had done and explained how it came to be. That should have been the end of it, and the thread should have stayed on-topic.
I don’t mind being corrected if I make an error. And getting some teasing when I make a boneheaded mistake is to be expected here. But the total hijacking of a thread over an inadvertent grammatical error is just cyber-wanking.
It’s not just my error that derailed the submarine thread. Often someone will make a general statement that, taken in context, should be acceptable. I’ve seen people make a general statement, set up a hypothetical situation, or ask a question, and then include a list of disclaimers and qualifications in an attempt to make it clear that the post doesn’t need to be picked apart. Many times the details are not important to the question. But it’s virtually guaranteed that someone will come along and post ‘But that doesn’t apply to [this situation you’re not posting about],’ or ‘But you said [this].’ We’re supposed to be an intelligent lot here, and so should be able to understand and interpret what isn’t said as easily as we can what is said, or as easily as we can apply rigid rules. Any moron can be deliberately obtuse or obnoxiously pedantic. We should be better than morons.
I agree. You have one of the better signal-to-noise ratios (of the posters whose names I immediately recognize), so I was amazed to see the wreck of U-thread* over something so pointless.
*Also, I lose points for reading comprehension, since the U-thread was the one you mentioned in the first sentence of the OP, and I conflated it with the CS thread. Thanks for not picking that up and rubbing my face in it, everybody.
How does one “report” a thread being derailed? Aside from the first few posts, I’ve yet to be asked questions that actually refers to the topic at hand here. 25% of people have told me to get off their lawn, 25% of people have taken umbrage with my political beliefs, and 50% have criticized my choice of thread title and squabbled as to a definition of “money” “well off” etc.
So yes, this pisses me off. It’s also something I didn’t notice nearly as much when I lurked starting in 2003.
I’m sorry, I wasn’t paying that much attention. I’ll try to stay more on the ball in the future. 