I think that most of the time its quite natural - if you see something coming up in a thread that you're interested in then you'll want to reply to it. People will in turn reply to that, and so on and so forth. Gradually the thread becomes a discussion on what was originally a tangential issue. I'm really not sure what the problem is, if people want to continue talking about the area of the thread thats important to them then no one is stopping them.
I understand though that quite a lot of threads go off topic because of spamming, thats a different issue as far as I'm concerned.
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[img]\"http://img1.ranchoweb.com/images/sproutman/certwist.gif\" alt=\" - \" /><br /><br /><i>\"And the angels all pallid and wan,<br />Uprising, unveiling, affirm,<br />That the play is the tragedy, man,<br />And its hero the Conquerer Worm.\"</i><br /> - Edgar Allan Poe
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