One of the problems with staying on topic...without a reason to talk about something, nobody talked about anything.
For example, I start a thread about lightweight axle options, people talk about the usual JJ&A, LT230 axle with GForce hubs, etc. then someone brings up a titanium axle.
That starts a discussion about the merits of titanium and if it could be used on other things besides axles, and before you know it the discussion has nothing to do with axles.
Well, the thread went off topic, but now there's all sorts of great information about how to use titanium to build other stuff.
Without that thread, nobody would have bothered to talk about titanium parts on LT's.
Now that's just an example to describe what I'm talking about, not necessarily an accurate account.
Some of the off topic discussions there would have never been started if it weren't for getting people interested and thinking about a certain subject.
I didn't bother enforcing that kind of stuff too much because it would have detracted from the forum and made people lose interest in posting due to being chastised for going off topic.
Without new posts, a forum stagnates...and when a forum stagnates, that's a good indicator that it's going to die.
QRHQ wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway, regardless of Q shutting it down, because people lost interest and stopped posting useful stuff.
The older members got tired of answering newbie questions and would simply refer them to the search bar.
Newbies got tired of hearing that and wouldn't post their questions and ideas.
The bickering between fanboys drove most of the members that were somewhere between the two extremes away.
Not much left to salvage after that.

Trying to stay on topic is fine, but if that's the only conversation going on in a dying forum, then you'd better let it be.
Check out some of the big forums and you'll see a completely different dynamic.
You start a thread, lots of people are posting, people go off topic and nobody cares.
Why?  Because there's still plenty left to discuss and the off topic posts are buried under the on topic posts.
It's near impossible to derail a thread that has plenty of life in it.
Threads that go off topic and never get back on topic just didn't have much life in them.
A good example of this was the Daraji thread, people went crazy off topic but it always came back around because there was always something new going on.
Threads going off topic aren't the result of other people, but rather a result of a topic that's lacking in substance.
Not always the case, but it is for the majority of the time.

So, take that into consideration when a thread goes off-topic.
Either have off-topic posts, or have a dead topic that leads to a dead forum.

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Mirroring is at 290,000 links, 14GB worth of website copied so far.
Still no idea how much is left.