could some kind soul steer this back to the topic that Shiv
drifted it from
You mean threads on silk actually drift BACK to original topics?
That should depend upon the "dimensionality" of the conversation space.
A 0-d list has nowhere to drift to, and hence never leaves the
original topic.
A 1-d list drifts back and forth, but tends to sweep across topics in
order, and, if one waits long enough, will always return to (or drift
arbitrarily far from!) any given topic.
A 2-d list follow the "drunkard's walk"; while it may return
arbitrarily close to a given topic, it is more likely to diverge over
time.
A 3-d or higher list almost never drifts back to any past topic.
-Dave
