Since the addition of Josh's Google-friendly mod on my forums, I don't care what my mostly-teenage members are posting about, as long as they're posting. I'm very strict about ensuring that "chit chat" stays in the "off-topic" forums, but I don't mind if they want to talk about homework or complain about their parents or review the new album by P!NK. I link to one of my other sites in my footer file, so every new page which my members generate is another page for Google to crawl, and another backlink for my other site. It also ends up driving new members to the board, because my forums now show up in search results for hundreds of different topics, not just the main topic of my board. I used to be very strict about what could and could not be discussed, but then I realized that the kids saw the board members as "family", and so I changed my thinking to make the best of the situation.
To keep other forums on-topic, I try to facilitate discussion by giving the members "topic starters".
