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Actually I read the rules and a lot of others do as well. When they see they aren´t taken seriously, they very often leave.
As for a thread being strong enough to survive disruption....I disagree. We have had numerous members leave in frustration. Do you want a serious forum or not? It´s that simple. I agree a few light hearted posts are fine, but they too often rapidly become just rude and abusive, and too often just disruptive for the sake of seeing if they can disrupt things. All too often they are succeed.
Often serious topics take thought, research and careful consideration. When others jump in, like children, it´s like making a dam in a stream. Thoughts are disrupted and the discourse is aborted.
Actually, in a free forum and web site, there is a whole spectrum of members, who don´t share the same ideas about a topic or what a conversation/forum thread should look like. Therefore, threads going off-topic is a natural thing in this kind of environment. Much like a random group of people in any other situation would not share the same idea of everything. If this was a paid forum strictly devoted to one subject or another, we would have the right to impose a certain set of rules, but that´s not the case here. A person who comes to this forum has to expect this and be willing to deal with it.
I agree that sometimes it is frustrating when all threads get hijacked by the same people (   ) But it is also often the case that if enough people are really interested in a topic in a serious way, they sometimes even dig it out long time afterwards.
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