Goldbach's conjecture states that every even number other than two can be expressed as the sum of two primes.

Though simple to express, this has turned out to be difficult to prove, or disprove. It remains just a conjecture.

Now, this thread, as was my Discounted Cash Flow thread, is value free. It's just mathematics.

So how long before someone drags their sustainability agenda, or water tank agenda, into it?

The real point here is that there are people on OLO who seem unable to understand where the limits of a discussion lie, and are determined to introduce their own pet interests into a thread regardless of relevance.

I was under the impression that off topic postings were against the rules, but it seems there are people around who interpret "topic" so broadly that it encompasses whatever they want to say.

It is a shame that this goes on because it has the effect of drowning out debate on the topic that the thread originator wanted to discuss.

Sylvia.

Sylvia, I'm interested in talking about how to keep threads on topic. There is certainly some trolling going on, as well as obsessive behaviour, but you get that in all social situations. Wondering what we can do about it.

I have been stricter with moderation recently because the new general forum has been less well-behaved than the articles forum, and that not only creates more work, but if you don't get on to unacceptable behaviour quickly, it tends to propagate.

One solution we have been canvassing is to moderate the creation of threads. Another suggestion was made that people who originate threads should have some powers of moderation. I can see some advantages to the second, but also a much higher level of complexity, as well as issues of legal liability and consistency of moderation across the site.

There are other solutions, such as having readers rank posters, so everyone can get some idea of the authority of particular posters, giving them a social guide as to who to avoid.

I hope others who have started threads contribute to this one so we can look at how we take this potentially very useful and influential forum forward.

Graham,

Yes, the off-topic posting problem is much like Gobach's conjecture. The problem is easy to state, but the solution is elusive.

Allowing thread orginators to moderate posts will obviously create accusations of censorship. Perhaps a half-way house would be to allow a thread originator to flag a post as being off topic, and for text of that posting then to be replaced by a link that can be followed by anyone who wants to read the allegedly off-topic posting.

The rules would have to provide some guidance as to what proportion of a post should be off topic before the post should be flagged.

There would probably then need to be a way for people who think a posting wasn't off topic (be they the poster, or someone else) to contact the thread originator in private to discuss that.

Of course, above I've described a significant amount of work for your engineers :(

Sylvia.

Dear Sylivia and Graham, I was interested in Goldbach's conjecture and didn't read carefully enough that the thread was really about hijacking. So in this instance I was mislead rather than highjacked.
Seriously though, I am not optimistic about the success of setting up a formal system. Rather, I think, we need to establish a politeness attitude. This may mean that you, and me, and others be ready to "hiss" that something is off topic and perhaps suggest that the contributor start another thread on the topic of his/her preference.

It may be that to some topic starters any post which seems to disagree with what he/she had in mind would be ruled off-topic. I could give a possible current example, but I won't.

One thing we could do without is attacking and/or denigrating people for their opinions, rather than just addressing those opinions. For instance, I would not usually regard a quotation from scripture as evidence to substantiate an opinion, but I would never tell someone that they were stupid just for having a spiritual belief.

Some posts do appear troll-like and I prefer to leave these alone. Although maybe in at least some cases it's just someone's idea of playing devil's advocate.

We're a very mixed bunch, aren't we? And I suppose that's what makes OLO so interesting. There's something for everyone.

Sylvia,
Thank you for reminding me what Goldbach's Conjecture was. Recognised the name, just couldn't put a face to it. I have not been participating in the forum long enough to be able to offer any constructive suggestions with confidence, but there does appear to be some merit in some form of rating system as suggested by Graham Y. It seems to me that much of the value of discussion (provided that that is what it is, not slagging) stems from the lateral branching of threads, so it would seem a pity to completely stifle this behaviour. Whether or not they remain on topic, posts in general reveal the area of interest or extent of concern felt by the poster. What would be interesting, if it were able to be engineered, would be some form of rating of posts, rather than posters, by readers.
If I may digress (or return to the topic, as the case may be), I have a dim recollection that there was a recent development in mathematics whereby a formula for the identification of all primes was derived. Does anyone know anything about this, and if true, does it go some way to proving Goldbach's conjecture? BTW, found your thread on the Water Scarcity Myth interesting.