This is somewhat unrelated. Maybe it should be a different topic, or a branch somehow. It’s not about mail clients, but more about workflow patterns. If there’s a “good Discourse etiquette” means of branching off a related but different topic, I’d appreciate knowing. In email, I’d either just continue the digression under the same thread, or edit the subject of my reply and leave it at that.
One thing that I’m noticing, as I start to try out Discourse a little more, is that because I’m not always in Discourse, I don’t continually skim threads (which I do with email - yeah I know, that’s a bit sad, I read everything that pours into my inbox…). So my participation here follows more of a “drop in, quick skim, post a batch of replies” format. I’m not sure if that’s better or worse - I don’t feel like my responses are as considered as they would be on email, but again it’s early days to form a firm view.
So it’s not so much “stop participating” as “drop into conversations randomly”…