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all of a sudden [the most recent 2 or 3 weeks], no one wants to make a new thread for a new topic. WTF?
one person stated in one thread a couple of weeks ago that he didn't want to start a new thread even though what he wanted to say was completely offtopic, and if replied to would hijack the thread. then he said what he wanted to say instead of starting a new thread. since then, several posters have followed his example like ants following a scent trail instead of actually thinking and doing the right thing.


here's the type of thought process that ought to occur to us when realising we're about to go offtopic:
this thread is ''wipeout t-shirts on ebay!''.
not only that, it's about a specific sale on ''ebay''.
and a specific line of t-shirts.
is this soundtrack promo flyer on ''ebay''? no.
is it a ''t-shirt''? no.
is it offtopic? yes.
would it tend to take this thread permanently offtopic to the point where the topic title would be meaningless and therefore make it hard to find the offtopic data? yes.
should there then be a new topic? yes.
is it about Wipeout merchandise? yes
would a general topic about Wipeout merchandise be specific enough? probably not.
then the conclusion is that the promo-flyer should have its own topic since it is, organisationally speaking, on the same level of categorisation as a specific sale of wipeout t-shirts.

wandering offtopic and then back again is okay, but lately there has been a plague of the kind of wandering that leads to hijacking, conscious or not, which makes it difficult to find what you want to find. no wonder newbies start threads subjects which have already been covered. even when someone is conscientious enough to really look for the needed data, the search engine can't even find what it looks for when the topic title has little to do with the posts in threads that go totally off their original course.

|end of rant|
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