derailing a thread 

The act of throwing a thread in a discussion forum off topic, oftentimes so much so that the original discussion is unable to continue.

A common result of a troll attempting to have fun at the expense of people actually trying to use the forum.

A common result of a flame war between multiple users.

Commonly helped along unintentionally by people who are simply off topic, as well as the occasional Grammar Nazi

Here is an example as might happen in the forum of an unreleased video game:

Topic: Post your ideas for things you want the developers to put into the game!

Original Poster:
Hey guys Ill edit my post to add ur ideas to this post Ill start off with destructible terrain no one's pulled that off as well as X-Com did back in the day.

Grammar Nazi:
Man Original Poster! What's with all of the huge run on sentence! Use some punctuation while you are at it too. Also, don't say ur, abbreviations are for text messaging, no one's gonna take you seriously.

Troll:
Haaahaaa, whatever Grammar nazi, ur so shtupid, wher'd u get ur PHD, shtupid land? n` Original Poster, wat u doin playin such an old game like X-Com for, it's SOOOO dated, I hate da graphics and der are so many bugs n crap

Original Poster:
Hey, X-Com is still rated the #1 game of all time by a lot of people! Who cares if it's got dated graphics, and if you get the right version or a fan made patch you can run it on a modern system easy.

Moderator:
Troll, stop trying to derail threads, this is your first warning, two more and it's a ban.

And Grammar Nazi, don't correct people's grammar in a thread, if you absolutely MUST do it, send a private message instead so it doesn't clutter up the forum!

I see you two derailing a thread every time I log onto the forum. And Original Poster, get back on topic or I'm going to lock this thread,

derailing a thread by ZOMGRLY? February 23, 2009