A Brief Word on Staying on Topic and Moderation of OT Posts

From time to time, a small minority of people will complain about a thread going off topic and being "moderated."

Keeping threads fairly strictly on topic is and always has been a goal of this forum. There are a number of reasons for this, but among the top:

• Threads kept on topic (and with good thread titles) perform better in SEO  (both externally and when using our own search engine on the site). This benefits anyone who wants to search (here or on Google, Bing, etc.) to find information. Someone who searches is more likely to stick around and contribute if they find the information they seek.
• Better "SEO" also benefits members in other ways: you are more likely to know what a thread is about by looking at the title or reading any post. If you search for "X" and the discussion is three posts about X and then 39 posts about Y, Z, Q, and L, that's not benefitting anyone.
• It's better for organizing the information on this site. If you want to look up a previous discussion, or quote something from another thread, it makes it easier to find and remember the location of it when the comment came in the discussion in which you expect it - not when a comment about Q was in a discussion on X.
• It cuts down on the number of personal attacks and stops people from bringing up old stuff. If Person B dislikes Person A because of a discussion from a month ago, it's likely off topic for Person B to mention how stupid they thought Person A behaved in a new thread. We can't completely stop people from liking and disliking others, but this helps keep it to a minimum.

There are other smaller ones, but those are the big ones. Also, we care quite a bit more about keeping things "on-topic" in the golf-related threads (particularly the instructional threads), than we do in other, slightly more fringe-related threads (though given people's sensitivity to politics, racism, etc. we will strive to keep a non-political, non-golf thread from devolving into a political discussion).

While it's easy to understand why this policy of fairly strict tolerance to keeping discussions on topic can be frustrating the first time you encounter it - particularly if you're new to the site - a great many of the members, particularly the long-time members, appreciate that this forum maintains this policy, likely for the advantages listed above.

I've been on other forums. Often many quickly devolve into discussions about something else entirely. Even when I'm not a member, I'll search for a topic, find a thread on a forum with a promising thread title, and find out that by the fifth post everyone's talking about something else entirely. That doesn't make the forum look good.

If you find yourself wanting to discuss an off-topic thing, the simple solution is this: start a new thread with the new topic . You can even "quote" a post in the original thread, copy it from the reply box, and paste it in to the new thread to kick things off. Also, we know we aren't perfect. We strive to be, but we're human in the end. You catch more flies with honey, as they say, but the truth is we don't even need honey - if you feel a topic has been wrongly labeled as "off topic," send a PM to myself or @mvmac and tell us why, logically, it should be allowed.

I have no good way to end this, having said all I think I need to say on this. Executive summary: we are somewhat strict about keeping discussions on-topic, for what we feel are good reasons, and over time the majority of people come to appreciate and welcome it. Many have told us this is the best moderated forum out there (and a good many of those people have had disagreements with myself, Mike, or other long-time forum members).

The end.

One of the great things about staying on topic can be seen in the instructional threads. Each thread you can cut and paste the whole thing, archive for later reading and acts as sort of a like a chapter in an instruction book because the thread doesn't veer.

Thanks for posting @iacas . You brought up a lot of good points. Members appreciate keeping things on topic and it's how we run a well-organized forum.

Here you go: