Getting off-topic.

[Ferlas]

This is sort of directed to the veterans of this forum, just saying that before I begin.

I've noticed that people have corrected other people's grammar, and I was wondering about getting off-topic. Do you, the manager of the site, mind if we get off-topic when we are correcting somebody's grammar, or if our discussion leads us to a different topic?

For instance, I asked somebody a grammar question in my welcome thread, and I know that if this were other forums, I would receive an infraction, and I was wondering if this was the case for this one.

Thanks in advance,
Michael

[Tomisimo]

I try to be as lenient as possible with respect to this. The forums have a couple of purposes-- one is to ask questions about Spanish or English, and get answers. Another is to practice your target language (Spanish or English) while asking/answering questions. Part of this practice naturally includes corrections. Short corrections right within other discussions are currently OK. One way to minimize getting off-topic and distracting from the thread is to reply to the topic of the thread, but then include any corrections right in the same post, sort of as a side note. If you can think of a better way of doing all this, I'm open to suggestions as well. I just want this place to be fun and useful to language learning, but at the same time that must include providing a structured format and keeping things on topic-- otherwise there would be too much noise and it would be harder to get something useful out of a thread.

I hope that answers your question.

If anyone else has an opinion, pitch in! We're not in a vacuum, and the forums wouldn't be anything without all of you, so I really want to give you a voice in how things are run around here.

[irmamar]

I've seen that in many threads the last posts are not related with the first ones at all, but I think it's as normal as if you were talking with somebody or even in a language class. First you start with a topic, this topic is related to another, above all talking about words with different meanings in both languages, English and Spanish. Then somebody has a doubt about something that has been written, so he asks about, etc.

I don't mind these things happen, I think they're as real as life itself.

[Rusty]

As far as going off-topic, I have to agree with irmamar. It's very difficult to stick with just one train of thought when others' opinions might get us thinking about something else! I've seen where splitting up the threads that take two or more different paths can be both useful AND confusing.

The only real problem I see with the threads that contain many topics is that the original title and the first post ("the question") don't give us a clue as to what else we might find in the thread (besides "the answer").

Maybe we need a 'subtitle', an additional display that shows what other topics might exist in a thread. That way, if someone is going to go off-topic in a thread, they might think about putting the other topic in the title for that post. If we could see these 'subtitles' when we're looking through the forums, I think that would be useful.

We already have a great searching tool to help us find words or phrases. We also have tags on many threads. These are great aids. A title and/or subtitle search/index might also prove useful.

[brute]

Originally Posted by Tomisimo

I try to be as lenient as possible with respect to this. The forums have a couple of purposes-- one is to ask questions about Spanish or English, and get answers. Another is to practice your target language (Spanish or English) while asking/answering questions. Part of this practice naturally includes corrections. Short corrections right within other discussions are currently OK. One way to minimize getting off-topic and distracting from the thread is to reply to the topic of the thread, but then include any corrections right in the same post, sort of as a side note. If you can think of a better way of doing all this, I'm open to suggestions as well. I just want this place to be fun and useful to language learning, but at the same time that must include providing a structured format and keeping things on topic-- otherwise there would be too much noise and it would be harder to get something useful out of a thread.

I hope that answers your question.

If anyone else has an opinion, pitch in! We're not in a vacuum, and the forums wouldn't be anything without all of you, so I really want to give you a voice in how things are run around here.

It is true that the threads do fray very quickly and develop split ends. It can be confusing at times when you are trying to find an old contribution in a much evolved thread. Perhaps the moderators could sometimes re-house (or duplicate) new lines of thought in new threads?

[Rusty]

The moderators have reworked some threads. This is what I referred to earlier, and mentioned that it can be both useful AND confusing. Some of us follow all the divergent paths in a thread and get confused when one of those paths ends up elsewhere.

New lines of thought could be placed in a new thread, but the new thread may have to contain quotes from another thread (to help explain why the question came up). This has been done before. Quoting, or just rephrasing what was read in another thread, is not difficult and it gives the new topic a place of its own (until we go off on the next tangent, that is).

[Fazor]

In all the forums I've used, people always bring up the topic of staying, well, on topic. I've never had a problem with a thread that naturally progressess even if the result is a different topic than the thread started out as.

The times I see it as a problem are when people purposely change the topic at the expense of the person who started the discussion (which I've NEVER seen in my admittedly short time here), or when people change the topic without answering the origonal question.

The later happens everywhere sometimes, and it's usually not intentional. This forum has a smaller regular-poster base than the others I'm use to, and the advantage is that usually someone will eventually come along and answer the question. Rusty's great at that; I know I've had plenty of posts where the topics wandered to something new, only to have him or someone else come back and answer me when they get a chance to.

And just to make a long post even longer; these are the kind of issues that I very deeply believe are best delt with on a case-by-case basis by the moderators, with no "set in stone" rule. The moderators here seem to do a bang-up job of keeping things friendly, interesting, and most importantly, very informative.

[Ferlas]

@ Everyone: I understand now. I asked because I realized that correcting someone's grammar and not responding to the thread would be considered off topic, but (Tomisimo), thanks for being so lenient.

[bobjenkins]

Originally Posted by irmamar

I've seen that in many threads the last posts are not related with the first ones at all, but I think it's as normal as if you were talking with somebody or even in a language class. First you start with a topic, this topic is related to another, above all talking about words with different meanings in both languages, English and Spanish. Then somebody has a doubt about something that has been written, so he asks about, etc.

I don't mind these things happen, I think they're as real as life itself.

Es verdad, la fin de los temas son muy diferente que el primer post

Si cualquier quiere saber..

Original Poster = OP

Verás eso en muchos foros