There seem to be a lot of good threads that suddenly get hijacked by people who seem to know each other taking it over for a chat, completely off topic, which rather leaves the questioner up the swannee, not getting any good answers. I'm not against people having a chat and have been guilty myself of adding comments which could be off topic. I am sure that ABers do this not malevolently, but when a response comes up from somebody they would like to chat with, so the only way is to do it there and then, regardless of the effect it has on the thread
It seems that the thing that is lacking is a personal messaging facility so that those who want to talk directly when they see a name they recognise, can do so without pinching somebody else's thread. Is there any way that this could be added, Ed?
I know what you mean Androcles, but I think it depends on the original question. generally this happens in Chatterbank where the questions are less.... important.
I think thats one of the reasons the "close thread" option exists, however how many times has someone asked for advice, never to return to the question or acknowledge any responses?
I think if the original poster monitored the question they should "close question" when they felt they had received a suitable reply or if they did not want to see the thread stray off topic.
So we have TWO types of hijacking, those who just want a chat and those who want to take it off topic. I was just interested to see if we could offer a facility to the first type. To the second type what can you say, other than something which may get your answer removed!
there was a message facility, as Dot says, but it sank with the rest of the improvements a couple of years ago. It was quite useful, you could snigger at other people behind their backs.