20 Please keep recurring debates on a particular topic to a single thread
When someone asks a question , they want an answer and not a debate. For example, if someone asks about buying a house, they don't want a debate about the pros and cons of mortgage brokers. Keep such debate to The Great Financial Debates forum. It is ok to occasionally post a particularly relevant reply with a link to that debate. In particular do not hijack a thread to let off steam on a vaguely related issue. A lot of threads have been dragged off thread to engage in public sector bashing or to say that we need a general election now. Don't waste time composing a long serious post with an off-topic aside on it. The full post will be deleted. The moderators do not have time to edit out the off-topic bits. If another poster takes a thread off-topic, ignore them or report the post. Don't respond.