Permitted flow, I guess "off topic" or not is somewhat dependent on the subject matter as well as a number of other factors. A short jab at someone that uses sarcasm to imply a point may be acceptable in a thread where someone is asking for feedback on their business idea, whereas it might not be acceptable for someone panicking asking for time sensitive technical support. Its tough to give a clear cut guide for what is and isn't ok, because its sort of a set of informal rules developed by the Bitcointalk discourse group that you get the feel for just by viewing posts here and seeing what people expect. As a general guideline, intent is as important as the subject matter. If you throw a friendly/neutral or even constructive off topic reply at someone, its far less likely to get reported. If you make the most amazing off topic post, however your intent is obvious that its just for post count, its still not safe from scrutiny. Aside from intent, you also end back at the unintentional effects of your post. If you make a post thats marginally on topic but directly draws conversation that is off topic and is distracting from the original purpose of the thread, it'll be far more likely to be deleted than just a single somewhat off topic post that doesn't grab the following conversation.
As I said it really depends so I can only speak about general scenarios, but I always liked the one thread of consciousness determination. If a reader can read your post without any additional information and see how it relates to the OP, it is in most cases fine. If you need additional explanation to see how it relates back to the OP, depending on all of the other factors mentioned previously, it has a higher risk of being considered off topic.
For example, lets say someone creates a thread about major mainstream retailers accepting Bitcoin. The subject matter of their post is speculation about why there are so many 3rd party sites that facilitate transactions, but they are not directly accepted.
It is probably acceptable to directly respond to the OP's thoughts, talk about major sales channels (Amazon/Ebay/etc) or the 3rd parties involved with relation to Bitcoin. Where things get a little uncertain is how far off the main train of thought you can go before it starts going off topic. General discussion about the CEO of Ebay would be two streams of consciousness off of the main topic, unless you are drawing some kind of conclusion back to that main point. At this point it sort of diverges. If your post is marginally on topic and holds no risk of dragging the rest of the conversation off topic, its probably OK even two streams of consciousness away from the main point. If its very easy to draw a connection back to the main point, even if you are starting to veer off topic, its probably an acceptable post. On the flip side, if you are on the main idea and you write about a specific 3rd party service with the intent to advertise it, it might be considered off topic, even though you are on the main train of thought.
Its sort of difficult to tell you exactly what you're looking for, as you're asking for definitive information about acceptable social behavior. A lot of it is based on the vibe, not specific rules.
Some interesting insights here. I'm going to read a few times then consider them all carefully.
Thanks for this.
