The new rules about hijacks are not being applied seriously

[Max_S]

@Velocity

Yet, there are some threads that are being allowed to be completely derailed with no moderator action.

I can’t speak for moderators, but I can speak for myself. I can also share this from the thread I made in January:

@Max_S

With the new rules for Great Debates, the staff are clearly calling for more focused threads with less hijacks. There are plenty of posts that I think are hijacks. Should I report them?

@Jonathan_Chance

Yes, you absolutely should.

I really need to crack down on hijacks and wandering threads. The boards will be better served - and threads more focused - by people starting new threads instead of hijacking existing threads.

Don’t worry about reporting. That’s exactly what we’re here for. It’s no trouble at all.

I’ve filed a couple reports, but not as many as I should.

Sometimes I’ve caught myself and explicitly made spin-off topics. Or asked others to followup in a new topic/private message. I can’t say I enjoy it, and I think it makes me look like I’m using bad-faith tactics to avoid answering direct questions.

In one instance I took an active hijack, which I was not yet participating in but found interesting, and copied the entire discussion to a new topic. In retrospect I probably shouldn’t have done that. I’m not a moderator and what I did looks a lot like moderating. Maybe I should have just reported it and moved on - but I did want to contribute to the discussion a little, which I did in the dedicated topic. I don’t think I bothered reporting this particular instance.

~Max