The tenacity with which the moderators police on topic matter around here is borderline ridiculous.
I'm always torn, matt ... conversations DO wander.
But we also have people who expect to find the topic indicated in the title. I also get plenty of public|private messages asking that I move stuff out to a separate thread or merge it into an existing thread. So what do I do? Do I split things off and keep it organized? Do I not ask people to just wander in the conversation? Sometimes I just slightly modify the thread title to make it more inclusive of the diff topics.
Usually I give a shot at trying to get it on topic by posting a friendly message. But hey, like most of you, I work long hours. At a job. And the job isn't TMC. This is unpaid (meaning, watch the insults, please). The moderators can't watch 24 hrs/day. So sometimes a thread takes off in a wild direction, with pleas from other forum members to take it to a separate thread. And so imagine being a mod, sitting down to enjoy browsing the forum, and being hit with a ton of messages to please get stuff cleaned up. And then there are all the new users - that means we need to moderate their early posts, help them find the right threads, move threads that were posted in Model S but they really meant Electric Vehicles, etc etc etc.
You all could help. When topics are going off, try redirecting the conversation. If that doesn't work start a new thread. Use the search function to make sure there isn't a thread already on the topic. And please, give us a break. I've especially appreciated the forum members who not only say 'this needs to be moved', but they include the links of where to move it to. Saves the mods time.
We don't volunteer our time just to drive you crazy. We're trying to keep TMC the 'go-to' place. I'm sure it's irritating when you are asked to stay on topic, but honestly, you have a lot of options. And a lot of other folks would prefer the topics stay somewhat clean, too.
Fair?