Very often a comment might generate a tangential reply that doesn't really fit within the scope of the thread in which it started. These "splinter conversations" may be relevant to the participants (and potentially to other readers) and it would be nice to continue them, but they don't conform to the thread topic. Is there a means by which one can reply to a post-- retaining the connection to it-- but doing so in another more appropriate topic section? From what I can tell, there are currently only two less-than-desirable options in these situations:

(1) Create a comment in another more appropriate thread to facilitate the "reply", but lose the connection to the original comment. This isn't very effective for following the flow of a conversation, and I think more often than not, the new comment is going to look spontaneous and without precedent, making it less relevant to the readers who don't understand its context.

(2) Reply with the off-topic comment anyway, and get your digital hands smacked by a moderator's red-text ruler. I realize that without some maintenance order within the topics, these threads will sprawl out into an unfocused free-for-all, but sometimes it feels like the interventions are hasty and unnecessarily haughty. No disrespect to the moderators, as I realize they're just fulfilling their assignments, but it does sometimes throw a wet blanket on things.

Personally, I think most often the tangents would wrap up fairly quickly on their own. Most people are mature enough to respect the general intentions of staying on-topic and will bring the side comments to closure without the need for shepherding. Sometimes comments by the "topic police" seem more disruptive to the conversations than the tangents themselves, and it sort of sours the reader experience, in my opinion.

So, out of respect for the order of this forum, I'd be happy to make use of some mechanism to move a reply to a more appropriate topic thread if there were some way to (obviously) retain its connection to the comment that it addresses, so that readers can readily understand the association without the need to dig through other threads to find it. Is there way to do this? (There may be such a practice already but for which I lack the web-savviness to recognize.)

Thanks much. I really enjoy this site, by the way. I love the diversity.