I'm not particularly worries about thread hijacking. Sometimes the discussion heads in a direction that doesn't interest me, but I can ignore things that don't interest me. On perennial threads, like CiDFS, the discussion will come back to the central theme. A new thread may die if it only raises a few original ideas and then devolves into repetition of some well-worn themes. That's ok. A substantive tangent can be moved to a new thread, which is a helpful technical fix.
The Appalachia tangent, for example, may raise something of interest yet, since there are some additional regional trends that are causing that region's colleges to be more prone to dire financial straits. A little hillbilly belittlement and defense along the way is to be expected, because that is an American tradition as old as Appalachia. I shall resist adding to it.
The forum has people with a variety of perspectives, and who are willing to stick to those. That is a rare and valuable situation these days. I learn from that variety; even the perspective I'll continue to disagree with. We all have higher-ed in common, so we share some values about learning being a good thing.
