Kelp Elite,
Since this is an online community, there are other things that come up in conversation.
I'll paint this picture a different way.
If you call a dive buddy on the phone to see if he/she wants to go out for a dive, you may talk about other things on the phone than diving.
If you actually get together and go diving, while you are together that day, you may talk about other things in person than diving.
If you were to stop calling a dive buddy and diving with them because they talk about other things than diving, I think that would seem a bit odd to most people.
Working under the assumption that you may be new to ScubaBoard and may not really have met any of us in person at this point (welcome to the board, by the way), it would make sense that you might be looking at this site solely as a resource for strictly learning facts and figures about diving. It is that, but for many of us it is much more. If you actually knew the people that were posting, just like the dive buddy on the phone that you may get together with, you might look at this a bit more like a telephone conversation over a party line with some friends, but with much more structure than chat rooms.
Having said that, you are right about some topics needing to stay somewhat focused and that's why we have moderators. That will hold more true in the equipment forums, medical forums and technical diving forums. The regional forums are here for both gathering information pertaining to the region as well as meeting like minded individuals that would like to get together and dive. Along the way, we get to know each other and keep the rules a bit looser in these regional forums. Many things fall into a grey area and then the moderators have to make a decision about whether something has wandered too far off and the thread has been hijacked to the detriment of the community or if the meandering conversation is actually OK. Some of this has to do with the way that the original poster in the thread sees it.
For instance, if you had started a thread and felt that it was getting hijacked to the detriment of getting the information you were seeking, you could send me (or another moderator) a PM and ask for the thread to be moderated to get it back on track. That may require deleting some posts or splitting a side conversation off into it's own thread. This happens all the time, but we want to be careful not to get into overmoderation if no one really wants it.
I think that the community aspect of ScubaBoard along with the moderated format are a couple of the reasons that ScubaBoard has over 40,000 members.
Does that help as an explanation why some threads wander off topic and what can be done about it when it seems necessary?
By the way, hopefully you can make it out to some of our dive get togethers and meet some of us.
Christian
Enjoy Catalina!
hillekke thread back! 
