My ex-wife used to say that I would "prattle," but I always considered it to be part of my charm. I do confess to sometimes getting into a lengthy discussion of a song when other people are waiting to sing. My friends gently remind me....

Going off track is a natural thing in human interaction. In many cases, it makes the interaction richer. Other times, it can be deadly. But attempts to steer the conversation or singing or whatever, can be even deadlier.

Our usual practice here is to allow discussions to be quite wide-ranging, and I think that's generally healthy. I sure don't like it when people try to control a thread and direct people to start new threads on subtopics that are clearly related to the original topic of discussion. And for the most part, we don't allow multiple threads on the same topic to be running at the same time. It gets too confusing.

-Joe, prattlingly-