What is the proper response to an overlong hijack? Comment in the thread? Notify a mod? Live with it?
In the schadenfreude thread I recently tried the first option twice (slippers and anthem) with a modicum of success, thanks to other posters who either echoed my comment or posted something relevant to the thread.
Now I see the same thing happening in the MFers thread, with a 50+ post hijack about chicken and waffles.
As I see it, there are two problems with lengthy hijacks. One is the obvious distraction from the topic of the thread, and the annoyance, commented on by me and many others, of coming back to the thread only to find a bunch of irrelevant posts.
I recognized the other problem while reading the anthem hijack: it was interesting and worthy of discussion. But there it was in an unrelated thread where it was a) annoying people not interested in it, and b) not being seen by at least some people who might have been interested but didn’t know it was there.
Sometimes mods will step in and tell the hijackers to start a new thread, and once in a while that happens. But ISTM not very often.
So are we supposed to report hijacks? What is the tipping point at which a hijack should be reported?
One obvious solution would be to lift the hijack out and put it in its own new thread. I think I’ve seen that happen occasionally, but I imagine it’s a lot of work for the mods and can have unintended consequences. Is it a viable option, or more trouble than it’s worth?
I’m right there with you on both of those threads.
I don’t mind too much for a while, I figure those long omnibus threads tend to wear down after a while and then the hijacks get a foothold because there’s nothing else going on. But really, chicken and waffles?
I don’t see any problem with mentioning it in the thread, I’ve done it too, but I think it also it helps to have something on-topic to post when you’re complaining about the hijack. It might tend to steer things back to the actual topic.
IMO - Report early and often. Once a hijack picks up steam it’s hard to stop.
OTOH, by the time your thread has a couple thousand posts it’s not an “everything including the kitchen sink thread”, but it is sort of an omnibus thread. Which admits of a certain amount of drift.
Different question: Are you sure the chicken and waffles stuff was a hijack? The off-topic recipe & food stuff is usually an in-group maneuver to stifle a troll via smoke screen. Not a rhetorical question: I have not and will not review the thread to see for myself.
Still it would be better if folks reported rather than smoke-screened. But those are different motivations from a garden variety digression.
Bear in mind that hijacks are only expressly prohibited in P&E and GD.
There are no rules governing hijacks in other forums, particularly not in the Pit. Sometimes threads are split in those forums, but as I understand it at this time, it’s at the discretion of moderators and based on individual circumstances.
To clarify a little, hijacks are heavily enforced against in GD and P&E but do generally need flags to be reviewed.
In FQ, don’t hijack until the question is answered factually. If the FQ has triggered a question in a fresh thread, start a new thread, don’t hijack the original. But once answered, drift is generally allowed.
Generally no enforcement of hijacks in the Pit.
MPSIMS is very conversational and except for breaking news threads, drift is generally allowed.
The other forums fall closer to FQ, though Café is somewhat conditional. A thread about an ongoing show should stay on topic as an example.
I believe that is a fair summery above. @engineer_comp_geek, @Chronos, @Miller have been modding much longer and are very active in the day to day modding and may well correct me or add more.
If it’s my thread, I’ll say that I’d love to keep the thread focused on (whatever). Then, I might report my post and ask if there’s something a moderator could do to keep the thread focused, and if not, you’re out of luck.
Why? It shouldn’t take long to find and post a Stupid MFer article from somewhere. There are a few posters who do it several times a week (and where are they when we need them?)
If it’s a stupid argument, report it and a mod can come by and shut it down.
If it’s a substantive hijack in IMHO or Cafe, that evolved innocently, and there’s interest in continuing it, but you want to remove it from the thread, you can DM me and I’ll probably move it to a new thread. (subject to availability, my agreeing with you, and all that. But just as W_E is willing to add tags, I’m generally willing to split threads.)
MPSIMS is more, well, pointless, and hijacks are often okay to stay. Except in breaking news thread, and a few other threads, which you ought to be able to recognize by their content. But if a hijack seems to be getting in the way of the main discussion, which is still ongoing, same advice.
Avoid hijacks in P&E and GD, and report them to a mod if you notice them.
FQ and the Pit, see @What_Exit 's post.
ETA: if you DM me, MAKE SURE TO INCLUDE A LINK TO ONE OF THE HIJACKY POSTS. I do not read every thread, and if you say, “the discussion about beer in the thread about John Mills”, it will be a lot of work for me to find it. Enough that I probably won’t.
I don’t understand the need to control the direction of friendly conversations.
Imagine being at a party with a bunch of people laughing and joking and saying, “Hey guys, you started talking about that time Bob pissed in his neighbor’s yard, but now you’ve moved on to talking about what a great chiropractor Steve is - If you don’t start talking about Bob again, I’m going to notify the host!”
That’s what you sound like to me. It’s bonkers. Why do this? Why worry about this? What do you have against chicken and waffles? Don’t you understand that the Pit is a lawless wasteland and most of us like it that way?
Well, because a message board is not an informal party conversation. If we wanted to just have a rambling, free-range discussion, we could have one big wandering thread instead of dividing them up into individual forums and threads.
But even in the Pit, threads have topics, and the people who read and participate in them expect them to stay more or less focused because they’re interested in that topic and not necessarily in hijacks that may arise, especially when they go on way too long.
I’ve tried chicken and waffles and didn’t care for the combo, but that’s not the point. I thought I was pretty clear in the OP about the problem with long hijacks.
