@Peter_Morris, for whatever reason, posters have been unable to stop themselves from going off topic in that thread. I actually got tired trying to count from the beginning when there were over 10 in the first 100 posts (mostly Noem’s HAT of all things!).
We also had doxxing, trolling, suggestions for illegal actions, personal attacks as well as multiple cases in-thread of moderation disputes.
Threads spun off to to KEEP the topic from going off topic:
As for moderator notes and or warnings for just going off topic?
[note - this is where @What_Exit made it clear that further off topic poster would invite Warnings]
[that’s three more hijacks after we said Warnings were coming, without actually giving one]
[this is where we get our First ATMB thread on the subject, admittedly after too much moderation discussion in thread, and NOT for the first time, and I modified the guidance slightly to be a bit more open, which was possibly a mistake in hindsight]
And there’s, what 2.5 ATMB topics from this thread, not counting this one?
And then we get to the warnings for @MikeF, @Peter_Morris, and @Smapti, because after ALL of the above, the hijacks continued. We kept offering notes in hope the posters would, if nothing else, follow the suggestions in the ATMB threads about the “reply as linked topic”, a parallel thread in a less restrictive forum (IMHO or the Pit), or just flag rather than contribute to the hijacks. I even linked the existing Pit thread on ICE and their actions, but…
For whatever individual reasons, different posters don’t want to stay on topic, and don’t want to spin off their own threads (oh wait, that’s another ATMB thread from this one spark!), and in many forums (see paragraph immediately above) it’s fine and even enjoyed. But P&E/GD is specifically low tolerance for hijacks.
We’ve sadly used all the available tolerance for it up, and at some point I’m wondering if we’ll just have to close the entire thread. Which would be a shame, there’s a ton of useful information as the investigation and efforts to thwart it continued, not to mention the additional killing and blatant legal overstep.