[Simon50]

Not once did I suggest that.
 

You are definitely off-topic.

This is a match thread for a specific match, on a specific day, at a specific tournament. It has nothing to do with McEnroe, Connors, Big Macs, or Hitler.

My point isn't that we shouldn't have these discussions, but that we should have them somewhere else.

Feel free to make a thread discussing the on-court behaviour of retired players and how Andy relates to that.

Feel free to start a new thread discussing Andy's big match play across his career.

Feel free to start an 'organic' conversation thread called 'off-season discussions'.

Okay, keep in mind that I'm new here and I take my lead from the others here, who I presume are old hands. Again, I mentioned the subject *in passing* and as other members who have been here much longer, took me up in on it within the thread itself, how was I to know the difference?

At the same time, who makes the rules, exactly? In my experience of forums, the thread titles are a guideline only, but it's legitimate, I feel, to make comments about subjects that tie in somewhere, just as you have sub-plots in a book. Everyone's mileage may differ somewhat, but I don't like coming in to *any* thread and advising posters about what they ought to be discussing , even if the subject somehow morphed organically into something else. I think that's a little presumptious, but then who am I to judge?

In case you didn't notice, the Connors / McEnroe discussion is over, so this is kind of like locking the barn door after the horse has bolted.

However, I do thank you for your opinion, even though, incidentally, I can't think of anything quite so boring as a 100 page thread purely about every single point in one single match.

[Aileen]

The discussion developed naturally enough - discussing Andy can lead to historical comparisons, which lead to varying views on those comparisons. Comparisons lead to varied views on the criteria of comparison -good/bad etc, then Hitler comes in. Its not too unusual as social reality dosen't neatly slice into discrete issues.

No one thought - ah sod talking Novak-Andy, what about the third reich!! There are mods here who can step in and move/create threads if they think its warranted.

I agree.  Also the truth is that threads have always gone off-topic when there's no Andy tennis to talk about, and more often than not this will start on the thread of the last match he played.  I'm not sure just what other category you could put this into anyway.  After the 2012 USO final, when the thread drifted off to Scottish independence, and given that the IndyRef was then two years off, it was very easy for Mark to split the thread and create the Scottish Politics one.   The off-topics thread is usually reserved for controversial and sometimes very personal arguments, which tend to stop quite quickly.