I dont' like it. I've said I don't like it, and I think it causes more trouble than it fixes.
There's an inherant dislike of starting new threads for several reasons. First of all, if everyone is reading one or two threads, you want to make your comments in those threads, so everyone who's paying attention reads them. Secondly, if you start creating a new thread every time you have a new thought, we have tons of two or three post threads, which clutters things up.
On the other hand, for a thread meant for a specific purpose, we want to keep that post on topic, so the concept of splitting occurs. There are several reasons I think this is bad.
1. The flow of the thread is interrupted. Threads wander naturally. It is not intentionally that they go off topic. In fact, most people post in response to something thinking it is entirely ON topic.
2. Usually, the splitting takes place by somone not following the thread. True, it's requested by someone in the thread, but if the person coming in to do the splitting doesn't really know what's going on, how are they to know where the split should occur?
3. It feels like a punishment. You can't keep on topic, so we're moving your posts elsewhere, good luck getting anyoen to read them. If the issue is bigger than the one topic in the one thread, and thigns are constantly split off, lots of stuff is lost, and people just never see it.
4. It's not a whole lot better than deletion. Who's going to go read a thread that was split off of the main one? I know it would never occur to me to...
I know it's difficult to keep up with all the stuff going on around the main thread, but is it really better to ignore all the rest, just so you don't have to read through other people's thoughts on closely related subjects? Would it not be better to understand the whole of a situation than just one narrow point of view?
I don't have a better suggestion. I kind of wish we could undo all the splits as I think the last two weeks are impossible to piece together any more, and there is much confusion about who said what where, and what took place where and why. I think it's added to the problem a HUGE amount.
In the latest split, it makes no sense to split off the few posts that were responding to thigns going on in the thread, and calling them off topic, when the conversation had been off topic for a couple of pages, leading to those few posts. I have fealt this way every time my posts have been split off, even when they were very much off topic.
We need a better solution.