Flogen - The Dublin Media Bias thread and off-topic posts.

Flukey

With respect Flogen, I don't think it had run its course. I was typing up a post, which was very much on topic, with no mentions of smoking, decentralisation or Go West, but on the Leaving Cert reports and Dublin media reporting in general. I was doing it when you were locking it, so my post was lost when I tried posting it. It was still open when I started typing it. I lost what was a good post on the main subject matter of the thread, a Dublin media bias. Unfortunately now it is lost.

Threads go off topic and evolve. That is the nature of threads on any discussion board and the nature of general debate and conversation. If we were all sitting in a room discussing any issue the conversation would naturally evolve seamlessly into many areas. Here we can only have conversations through the keyboard in front of us, because we can't all meet in the one place. Should threads really be closed while they are still very alive as demonstrated by the fact people are posting in them, even if they have varied a little off the original topic? My post would have brought it very much back on topic, but even if it didn't shouldn't the thread be let go on? It was still a lively and interesting discussion.

I know it is in the charter, but is it really wrong for threads to go off topic and evolve, which is exactly what happens in real conversation? Isn't that what we are trying to mirror here? We don't stop a verbal conversation when we have moved into new areas that have evolved from it. Even when they do change, conversations/threads often come back to the original topic. My lost post would have done that. If it began to get abusive, then it should be closed, but a discussion evolving is not a bad thing. A little more flexibility should be allowed before closing threads.

flogen

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Locked.