In my view, filling threads with off-topic material damages the utility of the forum. Readers who are interested in the topic need to wade past irrelevant stuff. Writers are discouraged from posting useful information when this will get buried in irrelevant stuff.
The problem is peculiar to the UK forum. The USA and Canada forums don't have this problem, which makes them far more readable.
If Quatloos is sufficiently freewheeling that it allows off-topic pub-talk, then I'm sure it also allows my moans about it. (Just as you are free to ignore my moans, obviously.)
Freddy, Freddy, I think you're getting a touch overwrought in your striving to be the conscience of Quatloos. Damages the utility of the forum? Wading past irrelevant stuff? All that from a few posts on pubs? Quatloos isn't the Washington Post reporting on Watergate, it's a bunch of people passing the time more or less discussing topics. This discussion is approaching 200 posts. Let's be honest here Fred. Go back and read them all from the start. How many are relevant? By relevant I mean;
1 - Providing new information on the topic under discussion.
2 - Providing new analysis or insight on the topic under discussion.
3 - Giving new opinions on the topic under discussion.
Apply that to the plethora of posts just on this one UK topic and advise us how many of them you think meet that standard. I'd guess under half. But I haven't seen you becoming the Quatloosian taskmaster on those superfluous post until I mentioned pubs, an issue that has aggravated you to comment in the past.
However, not let's argue, I'd agree 100% with your comment;
The problem is peculiar to the UK forum. The USA and Canada forums don't have this problem, which makes them far more readable.
Why would that be? I'd hazard a guess that it relates to you UK posters. You seem a very collegiate chatty bunch that enjoy socializing through your posts along with providing actual to-point topic discussions. Extensive, sometimes seemingly endless musings about Sweaty Sue, Tom, Amanda, and all of the other various targets of your discussions. If you go through the Canadian topics you can find numerous postings on my pubbing in Vancouver and my intense aversion to Canadian big-brewery beer, but, by and large, we stay directly on topic. The UK is different. Very different. As an example take this discussion;
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11141
Do you really thing that warrants 610 posts? Or what about the Godzilla of them all, Tom Crawford;
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10330
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10722
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10688
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10614
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11057
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10946
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=10829
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=11381
I make that out to be 10,118 posts about Tom, a story about one family not paying their mortgage and getting evicted from their house. Now, again, let's be honest Fred, how many of those 10,000 posts met your criteria of being relevant and on topic? Yet I can't recall you speaking up at the time about how pointless, irrelevant of posts about Tom were destroying Quatloos' credibility. But when I make a few posts from time to time about pubs you rise up in indignant wrath about how I'm destroying the "utility" of Quatloos! Really?
A bit of background. Quatloos was a sedate, slow-moving website covering American and Canadian tax and sovereigns issues then suddenly, seemingly in an instant, you UK posters came storming out of nowhere and blindsided us. One day there were no UK topics or posts, the next day there was Tom Crawford. You'll note that there are very few moderators trying to keep control over the UK postings. Largely Gregg, Arthur, Notorial, Observer, sometimes Wes, and me. We were overwhelmed. We could have followed your advice and saved ourselves a lot of effort by simply clamping down on you all, stomping on all posts and posters wasting our time with irrelevant posts, banning anyone who wasn't precisely to point. But Quatloos is a free-speech forum. So we decided to moderate the UK with a very light hand and, largely, let you all go to it. As Gregg said we take a very casual attitude to the issue of whether posts are directly on topic or not. Unfortunately this appears to conflict with your opinion of how the website should be run. However you seem to be a lone voice in the wilderness. If this lack of discipline upsets you that's unfortunate but you're stuck within the dictatorial and entirely subjective grasp of we mods. Which will include my ramblings about real ale and the decline of heritage pubs, a topic I'd wager is of far more vital interest to Britain's future than Tom and his brood.