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My thoughts and intent are simultaneously broader and more nuanced,

Broader in that it's not limited to any particular thread or subject.

Nuanced in that it's about the nature of discussion rather than the subject per se.

Expanding on that, we're living in an era with a number of differences to even the relatively recent past.

Go back to the pre-internet era and the first and primary focus for anyone with a message was how to get it out there. In other words, how to get the newspapers to run the story and ideally TV news too. Because the hard part wasn't the argument itself but rather, it was being able to have the argument publicly in the first place. No matter what the issue, if you couldn't get it in mainstream newspapers or on TV then you were stuffed. And unless you had serious $$$ behind you for paid advertising, you needed to get them to do it as news reporting at no cost to you.

What social media's done is removed that barrier to an extent. It's given anyone who wants to say something the ability to not just say it but to do so immediately and without a gatekeeper. The latter point being a key - regardless of arguments for or against specific media organisations, traditionally they did at least seek some proof that the issue was real. They wouldn't run a news story without verifying that it's at least a real issue.

Skipping a few steps, we've now come to a point where much is posted online not to inform or argue a particular viewpoint but for far more nefarious reasons. At best it's an individual seeking narcissistic supply by surrounding themselves only with those who agree and who'll give them praise no matter how flawed their argument. At worst it's deliberate misinformation for commercial gain, political gain or even as an act of intentional sabotage against a business or country.

We now have a situation with the key attributes:

1. The vast majority of opinion and comment available to the general public on any subject is based on, at best, extremely superficial knowledge. Professionals and actually knowledgeable amateurs have either been drowned out or they've simply given up trying.

2. Practically everything is seen through the lens of politics. Even something as unrelated as electronics or music can, depending on the detail, be a trap that's taken as a political statement.

3. Tribalism. It's coming to the point that if you want to know someone's opinion on a contentious moral question but don't want to have that discussion then all you need do is identify which tribe supports or opposes it, then ask them about some less contentious issue and see what they say. Because we've come to a point where many have simply outsourced their thinking and now follow a tribal view - once you work out which tribe they're following, you know what they think on every subject. It'd make for some decent comedy if only it wasn't a real thing actually happening.

Now to ASF more specifically, my own intention is to avoid contributing to the above in any way. That doesn't mean a refusal to post on any particular topic, it's more about the detail and nature of the discussion.

Joe's view plausibly differs from mine but as I see it, ASF is first and foremost a stock forum. That's it's reason for being.

Now I don't see a huge problem with the existence of off-topic posts within reason, so long as it's intellectual discussion and so on, but I do see a problem with certain matters.

One is tribal politics and that's one I'm steering well clear of going forward unless it's directly investment or trading-related.

Another is that in my view General Chat is one thing but a far bigger problem is when serious "on topic" financial threads are disrupted in a manner that would make any new visitor to the site walk away shaking their head and looking for somewhere else. That's not doing ASF any favours at all.

For a specific example "The state of the economy at the street level" which is a reasonably on-topic thread on a stock market forum and is located within the Business, Investment and Economics part of the forum. Suffice to say if I were a moderator, I'd be deleting a number of recent posts - not because I disagree with the content, but because they're so far off topic as to have nothing to do with the thread subject.

I see that as moderation not censorship - it's not the view expressed that's the problem, just that it doesn't have even the most tenuous link to the subject at hand and it's on a "serious" thread.

They're a distraction from a supposedly serious discussion and, this is my key point, don't present a good impression of the forum to anyone new to it. That sort of thing, derailing on topic threads, is a bigger issue than outright off topic discussion in General Chat in my view. It's a far more intrusive thing when political, religious or similar comment having no relevance to the subject creeps into on-topic economic, business, investment etc threads.

Just my views, acknowledged that others will likely disagree.