I don't think the emphasis should be locking out all off-topic discussion. The fact is when there's excess discussion in the lounge, there's less in the 68k forums, and that could well be due to the current inactivity in the vintage Mac market.

So while blocking off topic discussion except for IRC may work, it has the potential to damage the community.

Finally...

I've seen several times in the IRC channel where users have suggested the channel be ONLY 68k discussions. So forwarding the off topics from here to IRC cause problems there, and the only solution is to move off the 68kMLA altogether just to talk about something else. It's been done before (often with our Car discussions, for example).

You may all resume topic now.