Locking out of topic threads.

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First, sorry mods if this is too close towards breaking the rule of discussing locked topics, but last time it happened I also felt compelled to write something similar to this and it has been gnawing my mind for some time.
Is it realy wrong when a thread drifts out of topic, especially when it is still alive with people engaged on it? As long as they are still talking about something, what kind of disadvanges does it bring when it's just left alone until it runs it's natural course. I imagine it as two people talking about topic A and then finding themselves talking about topic B and someone saying "You are no longer talking about A, SHUT UP" *waves hammer menacingly * In the end, threads belong as much to the OP as to the people who put their time to post on them, except perhaps special cases like most of the threads in The Haven, but killing active threads for this reason and this reason only stiffles forum activity and interaction between members, in my opinion.

Going off topic isnt really a reason to lock a topic in most cases.

Big arguments that happen on that off-topic and would require moderators to send plenty of private messages/remove several posts is.

I havent really looked deep into fnords suggested lock but I have seen an accusation of bullying on the last page which is rarely a good sign

Solution: Start a new thread with the topic of one's choice.

spongy, I see what you mean then. But then the reason to lock uo the thread in the example you gave woudn't be because of it being out of topic, but because it was being disruptive in its own right.

Fnord, ideally that could work, and it has been done some times, but the people who are posting in one thread won't necessarily move to the new one, and if they indeed move then the first one would die out more often than not anyway, so why not just stay there and let'em talk?

So what if a thread dies out? It's not a person.

Besides, people going into the thread based on its stated topic will be disappointed at what amounts to false advertising - the stated topic should apply to the majority of posts in the thread, in my opinion; and if a new topic evolves, it should be split off to a new thread so that people will be able to find what they are looking for.

Not so much wrong, but it often gets to the point where what's under discussion has nothing whatever to do with the forum it's in - and if that doesn't matter, then there's probably no point in having forums at all.
Of course there is a point; it's a necessary function of any forum system covering a range of topics which are easily grouped into specific areas and topics in those groups should be justified by the forum description.
Some topics will drift around the main point but that is inevitable and acceptable, so long as the thing stays mainly on course and if not, a move to a more appropriate forum is more or less dictated by the direction a thread takes. This is fair to the "regulars" of the forum it appeared in and it's also fair to the regulars of the forum it's moved to, who might not otherwise have seen it.

This particular thread was locked because it had drifted so far off topic and dissolved into so many unrelated sub-topics it just became one large free-for-all about pretty much anything and in such cases, it's more productive to award the thread an early burial.
It ceases to have any direction or drive and just becomes... noise.

Once a thread dies out it stops being useful, my original argument was basically that if a new thread takes the place of another, then it would have been just the same as the original one had kept going on in the first place, without having to create a new one.

The second one is a fair point though, although at least I saw it coming I didn't come with a satisfactory answer then and I haven't now either, because in the end its true: a misleading title would draw people who would be attracted to the old topic but not to the new one, and fail to draw people who would otherwise have cared for the current one. Still, a partial counterpoint could be that when a topic is locked, instead of creating new topics about the new direction it took, those conversations just die out, and between killing the conversations and letting them run out of topic even if they don't draw as much new people as they could, I see the latter as the less damaging one ("But conversations are not people, they are not persons" you could be tempted to say. They have an entertaining and a social value and sometimes even an educational value, that's why I think they are worth preserving) Creating new topics is still the better option though, splitting good subconversations could be even better but that would put too much pressure and extra work on the mods.

Moving topics from one section to another is completely reasonable, but if for example a PPR thread changed to a different, but still PPR, topic, and it was going strong, what would the course of action be?

And now that we're talking about particular threads (You started it, I wash my hands on that one ) then I get it alright. But then it wouldn't have been locked *just* by virtue of it being out of topic, but because it really wasn't going anywhere. Although I personally don't mind noise much, unless it becomes disruptive.

There is rarely a "one size fits all" approach to handling these things; it depends very much on what the thread was about, the participants, the broad focus of existing posts, whether it appeared to be in the process of dying from natural causes etc - but in general, for those cases where the thread isn't adequately self-moderating and people ignore requests from others to get back on topic and/or we receive complaints about it being pulled off-topic, a reminder would be posted in an attempt to keep it on topic. In other cases, where a sub-topic attracted a strong interest and focus, and "grew legs of its own", we may consider splitting off those posts into a new and independent PPR thread.

I disagree. First of all, a "new" thread, assuming it was the same time as the first thread, has the advantage of having a relevant title. Also, if you read "Aspie community", you're going to get somewhat.....surprised if you read that the newest 10 posts are on "Aspie women do/don't exist". Allowing threads to devolve away from the OP's topic weakens the point of having titles, and if taking to the absurd level, could possibly reduce the usefulness of a particular forum.

^ that's why I said it was my original argument I've already been explained the benefits of creating new topics.

I still feel bad for the way your "why do people leave wp" turned out. Although I'd have hated if it had been locked, as there was still useful conversation inside, and in the end Cornflake didn't so it all more or less worked out. Ideally a new topic would have been started, but "ideally" does not always happen.

Ooops, I misread "my original argument was" as meaning that you were expanding on that line of discussion. My error.

The point that you referenced in your second paragraph does influence my views on the subject.