I think allowing conversation within the topic of each thread should be allowed.

But talking about Xmas or vacations, or other topics different from the thread should be discouraged. People ARE going to ask questions, about the topic...be it testing, or like the diet one I put up. The introductory post there should have a good amount of data on it to get started.

I have posts like this on the Vitamin forum. And it works well.
If conversation keeps going the questions are usually good ones and people can learn from those too.

I will watch them, and so will the rest of the team and we will move things if they get out of hand. We move things off Stumble Inn at MS occasionally too. At the MS forum it is the other way around...Their Subforum is conversational and the main forum is medical data. The team moves things off the stickies here occasionally too.

With time we may lock threads. But I don't think that is necessary basically. But we'll have to see how things go.
I know with my B12 thread on the stickies I refer people to it all the time and it "works". Referring people to a thread in the subforum will be similar. (and all new members ARE read first by the team for a short time before they even appear on the board...we will still be doing that).

The thrust of the subforum should be information. I think just restricting posts to the topic of each thread, is enough way to control the flow of information. There will always be people (especially new) who go to the wrong thread. As a moderator I see this every day. We gently move them when that happens. Our Community Feedback forum collects many new posters who post there with medical questions, and that forum is for comments and questions about how the forums work and problems with the site.

If you look at the views of my magnesium thread at Vitamin you can see how this "on topic" thing works.... I have over 30,000 views on that thread alone! They come from Google mostly and some are trolling info bots but many are real people.

I don't think we should "worry" about things, before they happen.
Making a good post on the subforum is no different from making it on the main board. It is just in a different place and easier to find.
If there is nointerest over time with it, it can be dismantled. DocJohn just merges the posts with the main board, and they are then mixed in like they are now. They are not "lost".