Ah, the perks of being a moderator. This site suffers greatly from threadcrapping (topic-drifting, derailing, making it personal, etc) not being moderated. Lots of other threads succumb to this behavior since it's a risk-free way to bury topics you don't like.
(And yes, I'm aware of the irony. Please feel free to move this post to Meta if you're ready to have this, imo overdue, discussion. Regards, Z)