Permit me to add a second reply :)

Thread Drift is one thing. Silent Thread Murder also exists. All threads have to die, of course. But in some cases they are silently murdered. It happens when someone you're debating with suddenly decides to respond no longer, without telling so. One person - who obviously takes the opponent seriously - takes the time to react, the other one decides not to response anymore, not even with something like "let's agree to disagree". As a matter of fact, I think it's quite impolite to silently kill a thread this way.

I think there's not much a moderator can do about it, although the silent thread killer could be warned that this is regarded as inappropriate and even inpolite behavior.

Note that this is not thread drift. We're still discussing moderator issues.


>Hi Nadya,
>
>The thing is how to decide where to split and how much. Also, it would probably take a UT person many hours of reading through threads (or branches of them) and trying to make those decisions. I can't think of an effective automated way of handling it, but it definately is a problem. I will respond to the message, regardless of the thread title.
>
>
>>There was an example quite recently (though there are lots of examples of this sort). Somebody asked a question about implementing arabic in VFP. It was called "Arabic version" or something along these lines. And then Martin Emre (?) switched it completely and it became a political battle very quickly. But the originator of the thread still kept the original topic and Ken Levy responded. I really wished there would be a mechanism to split.
>>
>>>
>>>No, because if we would do that it would become a real mess.
>>>
>>>For example, some would want to keep it as is so they can read everything even if it's a change of topic. Some, after such a potential thread break, would discuss about the initial topic even in the thread break portion which would make it impossible to link back to the original thread. Those are some reasons given as examples.