Gene, Lou doesn't delete threads for being off-topic. OT threads are perfectly okay. Preferably they say OT in the title but that's not a hard and fast rule either.
The problem has been threads which started off as a certain topic and then were turned into something much different.
Friendly little detours are okay. Even meandering far from the point, in some circumstances. You know how it can happen. But when the unfriendliness and general politics were throwing off good threads that's where the line was to be drawn.
What Lou started doing, and what I was responsible for doing while he was on sabbatical, was to remove posts which were derailing otherwise good threads. Either "unapproving" the posts, or routing them down to the Board of Inquiry.
So OT threads are okay. Threads being hijacked and made off-topic, not so much.
Fwiw, we've had a lounge but it had the problem of newbies posting friendly off-topic stuff down there and not being noticed. So we got rid of the lounge and said, let's hang up here.
We didn't even have a separate ID forum at the time. Because things weren't busy enough to justify it.
Maybe things are "busy" enough to think about it again. But just so you know OT is OK.