Well, i was a moderator on a large danish forum, some time ago. We had a forum called "rablerummet" freely translated to "Ramblin' room" or something like that. This particular part of the messageboard was later on divided into several subforums, so people who just came to chat could be, but that's beside my point.

Threads that were hijacked or threads lacking seriousness were put there, as some sort of garbage can, but not quite, as people who still had some unclosed matters in a thread still could post, without having the threads completely ruined by the town criers / forum trolls.

So, a forum could be called "unfinished business" and contain threads which have run off topic, as an example.

The important thing is, that not every thread is ruined, just because it's gone off topic. More than that, i don't feel that the flames forum deserves to be a waste basket.