Off topic posts may be moved here

[Layne]

Thanks screenman and others that inject a bit of humor to the forum.

Brent...count me as one that did not call in to complain about the "wandering".

[Chips be-gone]

Brent

Are these so-called complainers regular posters or lurkers just talking notes with out contributing?

[Chips be-gone]

I have a CRIERS towel for the ones that were born without a scene of humor.

dial 1-900-Waaaaaaaaa, Pay as you cry 1.95 per minute

[Brent Deines]

Brent

Are these so-called complainers regular posters or lurkers just talking notes with out contributing?

They are regular contributors and I don't consider them complainers. I think almost everyone likes a little humor, but many people come here for information and have a limited amount of time to spend on the forum each day, so they would prefer that threads stay on topic. I happen to agree with that as I tend to shy away from forums because when I do use one I am on a mission to find information and don't want to wade through a bunch of posts that have nothing to do with the topic I am researching. I don't think that means I don't have a sense of humor, but just that to me time is money and when we go off topic for more than a post or two it is a waste of time to a lot of members. That's why we created the water cooler.

You are entitled to your opinion, but I'm not sure why you guys are opposed to using the water cooler forum for it's intended purpose and leave the windshield repair forum for it's intended purpose. I have requested that we stay on topic many, many times; this is nothing new. Please respect this request.

[Brent Deines]

The title says it all.

[screenman]

Staying on topic is sometimes hard as most of us write what comes into our heads at that moment in time. Surely it cannot take more than a couple of minutes at a time to read a bit of banter. I for one will find answering posts takes much more of my time if I have to edit that what I write. Can we have a poll to see who wants what. We did this on a UK forum and only very few wanted change.

[Brent Deines]

Nope, there will be no poll on this subject. I prefer to keep things on topic as much as possible. You know very well that I am fairly lax on this, and every thread will have a few posts that are off topic, but when a thread gets too far off topic the title becomes meaningless. When that happens it makes it very difficult to find relevant threads, then when someone posts a question that they cannot find the answer to they are told to search for it. Staying on topic makes the forum more helpful for those who are serious about their business, and judging from the fact that there are very few responses to the jokes and other posts in the water cooler, I think it is quite clear that the majority of members prefer that we stay on topic as much as possible.

No one is suggesting that inserting humor in a post is a bad thing as long as the majority of the post is relevant to the title of the thread, but it does not take you any more time to post in the water cooler forum than the windshield repair forum if your post has no relevance to the thread title. That is the whole point of having different threads with descriptive titles.

Again, this is nothing new, and no one got upset over this when it was added to the forum guidelines, nor did anyone get upset when I posted a global reminder to stay on topic, so I'm not sure why it is bothering you now, but I'm afraid you will just have to live with my decision.