Off Topic Solution

[TailTactics]

I think a good solution to the off topic problem in threads is to sticky the first post on each page of the thread. Due to the fact that some people dont read the first post.

[Raiyuu]

[color=DarkGreen][font=Trebuchet MS]I don't know if we [/font][/color][color=DarkGreen][font=Trebuchet MS]actually have the facility to do that. We can sticky whole threads to the top of the forum, but if there's a tool for copying the first post onto every page of the thread, I don't know where it is.

Plus: I assume you're suggesting this as a solution to people skipping to the most recent post and just replying to that, and having the starter post at the top of every page won't help against those people. They'll still just skip to the most recent post and not see the starter.

But I suppose it could help in threads that go on to six billion pages, like the 'Nerds, Goths...' thread or the 'What do your sig/avi/username mean' thread. It would save people having to click the first page and then the last, but if they can't be bothered to do that, they might not be bothered to read the copied first post either.
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[Charles]

Yeah, nice thinking but I don't know myself. I have never seen this feature implemented anywhere before so I don't know if it is possible. Regardless, the first post introduces a topic but subsequent posts [i]develop[/i] the topic. A few pages in and the discussion may have potentially matured[i] past [/i]what the original post was talking about, and yet, everything is still on topic. I've noticed that in a good discussion people often go far beyond what was originally introduced.

This is just my opinion, but when people begin to go off-topic it can just as easily be because they read maybe the first three posts in a five page thread and just decided to throw their two cents in. Sometimes they also pick out a certain aspect of someone's post and focus on that instead of the topic, thus derailing it.

[Desbreko]

[color=#4B0082]Short of using a hack (which may or may not exist), I don't think this is possible with the current vB software. And I agree that, while it sounds good in theory, I don't think it would actually do much. If people are going to skip past the first post in a thread, they're also likely to skip past the first post on a page and go straight to the most recent one. So I doubt it would be worth the time needed to implement it, even assuming we could find a hack that does it.[/color]