How long before you tire of a thread here?

[Corinnguard]

How many of you stick around on a thread where the participants are posters you happen to know, or happen to be familiar with?

 

[payn]

How many of you stick around on a thread where the participants are posters you happen to know, or happen to be familiar with?

Usually, I get into threads because of such folks. Though, they and myself usually fade out in the later pages.

 

[Reynard]

How many of you stick around on a thread where the participants are posters you happen to know, or happen to be familiar with?

There are definitely some combinations of sparring posters that I enjoy watching.

 

[Clint_L]

How many of you stick around on a thread where the participants are posters you happen to know, or happen to be familiar with?

I'll automatically engage with a Snarff thread.

 

[Deset Gled]

Most threads here are pretty good. What happens is branching, where the point of conversation shifts in another direction and a few people go that way, then another branch in another direction, then the original conversation is still going. SO often you can post early in a thread (my MO), but when you return to it hours later, there are three different conversations going on. Which, I actually think is good and bad, but if I can't find anything interesting in any of those conversations

IMNSHO, this is the opposite of the problem most people have. Branching can be a good thing. When people post information that is actually new, interesting, or innovative, threads can be very long and still be very interesting.

However, the problem that the OP is talking about isn't branching. It's circling. Whirlpooling. Death spiraling. There are certain topics that seem to pull in the exact same arguements with the exact same talking points and the exact same posters over and over again. Over time, I've actually become suspicious that there may be posters who keyword search for certain terms, then latch onto threads like a rabid badger as soon as they see one of their pet topics get mentioned in passing, pulling the thread into their favorite death spiral with no regard to what the thread was originally about.

Generally speaking, I don't mind when people have particular interests. But there times/people on ENWorld that make it feel like you're not allowed to even mention certain words without risking a thread being derailed and sucked into one of these zombie circle talks. I've modified my vocabulary here to avoid problems. And an ignore list helps, too, of course. But it only takes one member of a clique to latch on and the rest of the group will show up and swarm.