Your Opinion Please...

Since I recently engaged in a discussion of canning and freezing methods without realizing it was off-topic, I'd have to say yes, I'm in favor of a place to have those types of discussions.

I'd rather not delve into subjects too far afield, however. (Pardon the pun.) For example, postings about how wonderful your grandkids are belong in a galaxy far, far away IMHO unless you want me to pull out all proud grandma stops and tell you in detail how wonderful my five are.

I think an off-topic forum should have at least a loose connection to the world of gardening and food production, although I suppose if people post things I'm not interested in, I can always ignore the posts. But if I had my "druthers" I'd "druther" we kept it at least in the realm of gardening.

Ander, that is the perfect example, thanks.

The canning thread has turned out to be an exceptionally informative thread, in part to your contributions. What a loss it would have been for everyone if there had been no place to discuss canning. Although it directly has nothing to do with sfg, it did take place in the food forum.

I can tie anything into sfg, it's just a matter of degrees of separation. I'm not going to play arbiter. With respect to the Terms of Service and our determination to keep this a family friendly forum, I'm for letting the off-forum topic be just that-wide open.

My thinking is that an off-topic forum will keep the on-topic forums more concise for those members who choose to read only sfg content. I am more interested in keeping threads on-topic where appropriate, than what topics are being discussed in the off-topic forum.

I'm as guilty as anyone of drifting off-topic. I forget we have a new place to take a conversation to when it drifts-the chat room. Now we'll have two places to go. May I suggest that all it takes is a friendly reminder, when appropriate, that that is what they are for.

After re-reading this thread, it appears some posts are harbingers of threads to come. I'm not the least bit interested in reading about Johnny's runny nose at school today. But, that poster is probably not interested in reading threads about welding, tractors, and football that I might post about. If I make a post about welding, and there are no responses, it makes sense to me that there's no reason to talk about welding anymore.

I predict there will be some topics of interest and value to all sfg'ers in the off-topic forum, even though they are not closely tied to sfg.

(Doing my best Tom Brokaw imitation) It's 6pm on the east coast, and 3pm in the west. The polls are closing down, and based on a sampling of early returns, we feel confident in projecting the winner of this poll to be: The ayes have it by a large margin!

And that's the reason for closing this thread.