Why does this forum have a "Non-Road" board?

[usends]

Do we really need an "Off-topic" section?  If it's not road-related, why post it to this forum at all?  Maybe if we eliminated this section (thereby forcing people to post in the appropriate road-related section), we could cut down on some of the inane topics.

[1995hoo]

Just about every forum I've ever visited has some sort of "off-topic" section under any of a variety of names ("Ramblings" on AcuraZine; "The Corner" on TheSabre.com, named for an area of pubs and shops near the UVA Grounds; "Shooting the Sheisse" on the unofficial Washington Capitals forum; "Anything but Hockey" on the old version of the official Caps forum; "The Red Loft" on the Washington Nationals Fan Forum, named for the centerfield bar area at Nationals Park). It's natural that any group of people who converse regularly on a topic, regardless of what it is, will occasionally have other interests on which they'd like to comment. Maintaining an "off-topic" section allows for that sort of discussion without cluttering up the main boards. I've seen a number of sites that further split off political discussion into a separate subforum because politics can provoke such nasty rhetoric these days and the moderators don't want the nastiness spilling over to other threads. On TheSabre.com the politics board is called "The Soapbox" and when someone makes a political post on another board, people say "TITS" (Take It to the Soapbox) or they post "( . ) ( . )"

[corco]

I'd actually foresee the opposite- without an off-topic place, it seems like people hijack regular threads more often. I've been part of internet communities that have tried to go without off-topic places before, and it always ends up with people posting off-topic crap in on-topic threads, leading to a moderation headache.

It's like the fictional highways board here- it might be 75% full of unfortunately overly thought out posts relying on some false premise that renders the whole point moot, so nobody reads or cares about those posts, but without that fictional highways board everything else would be unreadable. Off-topic serves the same purpose.

[Takumi]

Yeah, it's better this way.

[J N Winkler]

As 1995hoo points out, we are hardly unique in having an off-topic board.  SABRE has one too (Sabristi Unleashed), although it is not visible unless you have an account and are logged in.

I think it is valuable to have an off-topic board because it recognizes that we are a community of people with other interests, many of which are shared, that do not have to do with roads.  It also makes it easier to police topicality in the "on-topic" boards since posts or threads which are not on topic can simply be moved to the off-topic board, rather than being deleted altogether.

Deletion tends to cause more problems than it solves because (1) it attracts complaints of censorship (whether the deletion is justified or not), (2) a deleted post by definition cannot be reviewed and so it is not possible to tell whether it has been deleted for lack of topicality or because it offended a moderator, and (3) the act of deletion itself often creates more waves than letting the post stand.

I do agree that inane topics can be a problem.  On this board it has so far been kept under control reasonably well by moving things like "every road an Interstate" to ghettos like the Fictional Highways board.  But in some cases you ultimately have to go after the bad actors who generate the inane posts and threads.  On this board it has been done recently by banishing ethanman62187 (whom I suspect was a straightforward troll, but cannot be 100% certain because I haven't seen correspondence between him and the moderators).  However, in cases where a crapflooder shows a genuine desire to improve but has little idea how exactly to do it, it can work better to set limits on post frequency.  The idea is to force an unintentional crapflooder to think before he or she posts.

In one case I had to deal with in a past moderator role, I fixed an upper ceiling of 10 posts per day and told the user I was dealing with that I would be checking that he observed this limit over the following two weeks.  (I chose 10 posts per day on the basis that it was twice the daily average of the member with the highest post count, who had been part of the forum from the very beginning.)  That more or less solved the problem.

[triplemultiplex]

Because it can be fun to find out that one shares another area of interest in addition to the topic of the forum with other forum users.  That's what makes it a community.

What's that old saying about all work and no play?

[SteveG1988]

It is also a good way to get to know fellow members. See what they like in relation to what you like

[formulanone]

To put it bluntly, forums without an off-topic section are no fun. You get to learn about the other members. Participation is not required.

Everything can eventually lead to an off-topic discussion, so there's a place for discussions that are tangent to the board's main topic, and those which aren't even close. Otherwise, the moderation staff has to make a lot of arbitrary decisions about which threads stay, and which ones get locked.

[hm insulators]

Aaroads is a niche webpage, just like there are niche webpages for things like astronomy, model building, collecting insulators, playing the guitar or whatever your interests are. But just like most sports fans are not just fans of one particular sport to the exclusion of other sports, most people have more than one hobby or interest in life. As a result, most niche webpages will have an off-topic forum. Sure, we love to talk about roads and highways on this website and similar others, but it's a natural curiosity to ask our fellow road fans what kind of music they like, or what sports they like, or maybe we have a problem with the whatchamacallit throwing a doohickey and how do we fix it--and sure enough, somebody on the forum will own the same whatchamacallit and say, "I had the same problem with mine. Do this, this and that." 

[huskeroadgeek]

It is also a good way to get to know fellow members. See what they like in relation to what you like

Agreed. I also notice that a good number of threads on this off-topic board have some tangential relationship to roads such as anything geography-related, but don't fit in any of the specific road-related forums, so it's nice to have some place to discuss it. There's also threads on here about travel in general like restaurants and hotels, which are good topics for anything roads-related as well, but again don't fit any of the specific road-related forums.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

Do we really need an "Off-topic" section?  If it's not road-related, why post it to this forum at all?  Maybe if we eliminated this section (thereby forcing people to post in the appropriate road-related section), we could cut down on some of the inane topics.

Eliminate Off-Topic and thread hijackings will increase tenfold.

Everyone's pretty much put the bird to your ear as to why an off-topic section is important.

If you don't like it, don't click it...but don't go clamoring for nanny-state stye bullshit (i.e. elimination of off-topic) just because you lack the self-control that's necessary to live by that mantra.

[NE2]

If you don't like it, don't click it...but don't go clamoring for nanny-state stye bullshit (i.e. elimination of off-topic) just because you lack the self-control that's necessary to live by that mantra.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

[corco]

Drunk...I'd assume? He's usually pretty nice.

[hbelkins]

Another thing to consider ... many of us know each other and are friends and/or acquaintances IRL, and this gives us yet another place where we can shoot the bull.

[agentsteel53]

he's been replaced by an impostor.  this 43/72 might be next!

[Beltway]

Do we really need an "Off-topic" section?  If it's not road-related, why post it to this forum at all?  Maybe if we eliminated this section (thereby forcing people to post in the appropriate road-related section), we could cut down on some of the inane topics.

A poster doesn't need to read this thread if they don't want to.

As long as they don't post it in topical threads, I don't care.

[luokou]

Do we really need an "Off-topic" section?  If it's not road-related, why post it to this forum at all?  Maybe if we eliminated this section (thereby forcing people to post in the appropriate road-related section), we could cut down on some of the inane topics.

Of course we need the Off-topic section, otherwise this very thread wouldn't exist.

[Crazy Volvo Guy]

What the fuck is wrong with you?

Let's see: he comes in here and implies that the off-topic section, which most of us enjoy, should be eliminated and thus all of us who enjoy it should get our toes stepped on because he doesn't understand/like it.  That's the sort of thing that really gets under my skin.  Normally I'm nicer about it, but when I'm tired and can't sleep - as was the case when I wrote that post - I can be rather cranky, especially when something gets under my skin.

edit:// and living in this miserable town full of the most selfish and entitled people I've ever dealt with in my life has me jaded toward humanity in general right now.  I really, really need to get out of here, but alas, I don't have the means quite yet.