By “does not belong” you presumably mean “does not fit the general pattern of content that came before it as I perceived it”. Why do you think it is valuable for sites to maintain the same general pattern of content?
It’s not that hard to hide threads. There is a little minus button next to every author’s byline. The amount of damage an off-topic thread can do those who are not interested is quite minimal, but the amount it could help those who are interested is practically unbounded.
It’s easy to think that any one thread is easy to hide, but online forums tend to devolve. We are a species that watches breakups on TV, if you don’t maintain SOME pattern of content, then common content will bleed in and eventually dominate.
By “does not belong” you presumably mean “does not fit the general pattern of content that came before it as I perceived it”. Why do you think it is valuable for sites to maintain the same general pattern of content?
It’s not that hard to hide threads. There is a little minus button next to every author’s byline. The amount of damage an off-topic thread can do those who are not interested is quite minimal, but the amount it could help those who are interested is practically unbounded.
It’s easy to think that any one thread is easy to hide, but online forums tend to devolve. We are a species that watches breakups on TV, if you don’t maintain SOME pattern of content, then common content will bleed in and eventually dominate.