This is a chat forum and thread starters are chat facilitators, not chat controllers. So I think your notion - of thread starter equating to teacher and all who respond are students who are supposed to stay strictly on the topic the author intended - is misguided and not applicable.
Ever hear of poisoning the thread? Ever hear of hi-jacking a thread? That happens all too often.
When I post a thread, I stay with it pretty much until people are done...I consider it polite to do so. Therefore, it is an investment of my time and effort, so I feel perfectly justified to try to keep it on topic...especially with as many comments as came in. I am not controlling, I am facilitating.
Other people may post and run, i.e. they leave the thread and folks say whatever they want...or their threads only have a few comments, they can do what they want.
You are more than welcome to start a thread about this article, the title, God’s will or whatever you like. However, that is not why I posted the thread...
Actually, I think I am doing poster a favor by pointing what the article is about or why I posted it...and it is perfectly OK for me to try to keep it on topic—especially since your comments were directed to me—others started discussing things among themselves on the thread and that is fine I let them...
As a person who tries to read and understand before I comment, I have found it surprising how so many people will comment on things that have no bearing on the article—they read one word, or one line, and they are off to the races with irrelevant or erroneous comments...
Sorry, I guess like many things here on FR these days, we will just have to agree to disagree.
My comments were not direct at you, they were directed at the title of the article, and as a thread starter you should expect many such comments that are not specifically addressing you but the content. Let me also suggest that a better strategy for maintaining your preferredfocu might be to just ignore comments that stray from that rather than trying to shepherd them all into your coral.
However, it’s perfectly fine for you to point out the focus of the article and to say in response that it is what YOU would rather discuss.
But when I gave a reply that clearly indicated that I was commenting on the title, your first response to me and was “Did you read the article”? That goes beyond stating your preference and implies so wrongdoing on my part for daring to comment on anything other than the article in totality, which you later reinforced with your replies that followed.
Stick to what you want to talk about - that’s fine. I won’t scold you for your preferences, so please don’t scold me for mine. If you don’t like the focus of the related topic I introduced in my reply, then better to just ignore it or to politely say that it doesn’t interest you.