...considering the way you were pumping up your post count over the past few weeks, I think Kicky was perfectly justified in doing what he did)
I thought I would briefly comment on this statement of yours Goat, even though it has nuthin to do with Jesse Jackson. My comments may nonetheless be somewhat appropriate in a "site feedback" forum. The issues here are insignificant, I just find them interesting enough to comment on, even if they don't matter in the overall scheme of things.
It has never even remotely occurred to me that it would have any meaning or value whatsoever to "pump up" my post count, yet I see people accusing me and others of "trying" to do that. I used to wonder why. If they think someone else is merely trying to increase his post count, then it must be something they think is desirable, but again, what difference could it possibly make?
After a while I start to see why: Many posters judge others, and want to be judged, by virtue of the number of posts made (or not made, in the case of "noobs'). I have always found this to be utterly ridiculous. Whether it is a poster's first, or his 10,000th, post is utterly irrelevant to me. I simply look at the content of the post to evaluate it's merit, NOT the number of prior posts made by its author. The "status" of a poster, from my perspective, is TOTALLY unrelated to the number of posts made in this forum. I have seen cases where a poster making his very first post completely outclasses the poster he is addressing, who has 5,000+ posts. Yet many people still seem to think that the "status" of both themselves and others is somehow determined in whole or part by the number of posts they have made, versus someone else. I guess this just goes to show how superficial, shallow, petty, and arbitrary message board posters can be in their methods of evaluating the "worth" of another poster, eh?
On a related note, the seemingly sincere complaints about "off-topic" comments have always puzzled me. To me these thing just naturally meander, and that hurts no one. Everyone is free to compose any post they want and publish it. If they are interested in commenting about the topic indicated in the thread title nobody is "preventing" them from doing so, as they appear to think.
Here you, in passing, mention "pumping up a thread count." For me, this now becomes a comment that is part of the thread, and there is no other thread in which to respond to such, admittedly secondary, points, other than the thread where the comment was made. Yes, it would be much more "orderly," but also much more stifling to natural discussion, to ABSOLUTELY PROHIBIT any allusion to ANY matter that is not STRICTLY and DIRECTLY related to the "post topic," whatever one may interpret that topic to mean.
There was a point in this thread where the commentary between One Brow and 2814 took on a much more "general" socio-political tone than could be strictly related to the particular exchanges made by and between specific and particular NBA owners, players, commissioners, and outside activists. I found that direction interesting, but unrelated, so I started a new thread in what I thought was the more appropriate "general discussion forum" to pursue it.
Kicky'a response was to insist that it ALL belonged in the same thread, so it seems to me that what constitutes "thread hijacking" is itself a very subjective thing. All said and done "thread hijacking" is a concept that, for me, at least, is virtually unintelligible and useless. Separate forums I think I understand but trying to analyze each and every sentence within a particular thread which is in the appropriate forum seems pointless to me. It does, however, seem to provide a convenient excuse for an officious type poster to berate another and whine about the "harm" being caused to himself by reading a sentence that is not directly related to words contained in the title of the thread. This is a message board, a place for people to discuss things. If you're in the "general" forum, I really can't see why virtually any comment made in virtually any thread is not a "general" one that "fits" if it develops out of the natural course of an ongoing discussion.
I understand that if I take a tolerant, liberal view of "relevancy" then I am losing a potential basis for complaining that I am "disturbed" by what other posters are doing, but I can live with that, ya know?