[Question] [On Topic] Prefix? Good thing or unnecessary?

I dunno. I don't really necessarily see a prefix helping us stay on topic any more than not having a prefix does.

As a common derailer I am against such practices.

Nah!

While I don't think it is necessarily a bad idea I do think it will be mostly unused or at least used in vain.

Meh. If someone is annoyed because people are derailing and it's a problem they can report it and we mods can tell people to knock it off. Usually that only happens when the derailing is trolling or dickery. I think thats fine.

Seems to me it would cause more thread derailment than it stops.

Probably unnecessary. Most of our posters, I believe, are ok with their threads going in weird directions most of the time. For the serious threads that need to stay on topic, we can usually tell from the tone and content. And the OP is free to state in the first post that he/she wants things to stay on topic, right?

This thread is now about steak.

I'm a bit torn on this.

We have come to expect that threads will meander, and it's fine. In fact, I suspect a lot of threads would have died in infancy if they weren't allowed to wander.

There are a few threads where it would be useful and important to stay on topic, and/or restrict some types of posts (ie, a PVP fan thread sans the kurtz bashing).

But that would require additional policing by members and work by moderators.

I don't know that making an official designation where the moderators will promise to actively police such threads is really going to buy us anything. When we've needed an on-topic thread, we've simply asserted that in the first post, and reported off topic posts and/or chastised people who posted off topic.

It's worked so far.

Does anyone feel that some threads would be better with such an explicit service?

I guess the only thing that needs to be done is to say that, if someone starts a thread and they want it kept on topic then they need to report off topic posts and people can't be giant whiners when we enforce it (not that people ever do that around here).