There is a difference between a conversation roaming a little bit and a conversation being destroyed by tons of useless posts.
Roaming:
OP - I like Thundercats. I wish it was still on.
Poster 1 - Me too. Jaga ftw.
Poster 2 - Panthro = awesome, remember that time (blah blah blah)
Poster 3 - You know what else was cool? Voltron.
Poster 2 - Hell yeah, I frickin loved Voltron.
Conversation roamed, but was still about the same general thing: The OPs love for old cartoons that were totally awesome.
Threadcrapping:
OP - Legos are cool. Once I built a boat.
Poster 1 - Oh man! I love legos!
Poster 2-7 - Sweet, legos, spaceship, castle, etc...
Threadcrapper 1 - z0mg I'm awesome!
Threadcrapper 2 - :icture of kitten in hilarious situation::
Shyrra - look at me! I'm doing something crazy! (lolShyrra)
Threadcrapper 4-80 - PS3 sucks! 360 sux!
Threadcrappers bring nothing to the table.
lol
I understand what you mean. Luv the way you spelled it out. Do I think it can be annoying, yes.
My point is that the site benefits from it almost 100%. Bringing traffic to a site can be a hard task, if you don't bring it...the site will die out and all your work down the drain. Ever heard the saying "any publicity is good publicity", this follows very close.
I'm not in any way defending the crappers or what they did, I'm just pointing out a different view on the subject. There are numerous parties involved in this and I try n think what each of them is thinking.
The stance I wrote about is the website admins perspective. They alone have the power to do something about it but choose not to...my reasoning is most likely the reason why. They only gain from the situation. It gives them free content, gives them real cash in pockets from advertising, higher pagerank, better placement in search engines and more users of site. Forums are goldmines for websites.