the problem is, we can all tell when an idea has wandered off topic, but it's very difficult to figure out when, how, or why.
It's quite possible it actually IS on topic, it's just not obvious.
During the last two weeks we switched from being unwilling to act, to overly willing to act. This is no one's fault, and completely understandable. The thing is, it's most evident in the splitting, which is easy to do and completely within the duties of a ranger.
However, it can get to be too much. If you ask someont to split the thread, but be conservative, you're placing a value judgement on which posts were "really" off topic, and which were only "almost" off topic. This is where people can get suspicious of motivations, and question why their stuff was split off but others wasn't.
Maybe it's just me and I'm overly sensative to this right now, but I always seem to be in the discussion when things get split off, and it's never split how I would expect it to be split, either too much is taken off or not enough... which just shows that it's an entirely objective and confusing thing to do.
I guess my only recommendation without much more thought is to be more reluctant to both ask for and do a split. I mean, that thread was started over JUST because splitting it was getting to hard... that sets off alarm bells to me... it's like we're LOOKING for the next chance to split someone's post off for not "staying in line."