I think (Correct if if I'm wrong) the suggestion here is simply that if you are about to make a post that *you* feel is going to veer the converstion off to some other worthwhile discussion *you* should just start a new thread. Done that way IMHO it would be a better course of action, namely because the useful side stuff would be seen by those who may not intrested in the orginal thread and be intrested in or have good info on the side topic. It also makes the side stuff more visable to those who search for it later

I belive this was made as suggestion for monks to try when they are in this situation as opposed to a hard and fast rule enforeced by anyone, bear in mind that a lot of how this site works is based on newcomers follwing what those who have come before have done and thus far I think that has worked suprisingly well.

In reply to Re: Re: Off-topicing the thread by Desdinova
in thread Off-topicing the thread by artist

Title:
Use:  <p> text here (a paragraph) </p>
and:  <code> code here </code>
to format your post, it's "PerlMonks-approved HTML":


  • Posts are HTML formatted. Put <p> </p> tags around your paragraphs. Put <code> </code> tags around your code and data!
  • Titles consisting of a single word are discouraged, and in most cases are disallowed outright.
  • Read Where should I post X? if you're not absolutely sure you're posting in the right place.
  • Please read these before you post! —
  • Posts may use any of the Perl Monks Approved HTML tags:
    a, abbr, b, big, blockquote, br, caption, center, col, colgroup, dd, del, details, div, dl, dt, em, font, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, hr, i, ins, li, ol, p, pre, readmore, small, span, spoiler, strike, strong, sub, summary, sup, table, tbody, td, tfoot, th, thead, tr, tt, u, ul, wbr
  • You may need to use entities for some characters, as follows. (Exception: Within code tags, you can put the characters literally.)
            For:     Use:
    & &amp;
    < &lt;
    > &gt;
    [ &#91;
    ] &#93;
  • Link using PerlMonks shortcuts! What shortcuts can I use for linking?
  • See Writeup Formatting Tips and other pages linked from there for more info.