(Just noticed Cerebus posted something similar; he's just quicker than I am. This re-iterates that, albeit a bit more lengthy.)
In short, if I look at an "Ask the Staff" thread and see 15 replies I am very reluctant to wade through them when from unfortunate experience 90% are OOC Chatter. What ends up happening is there are lots of player responses and sometimes no staff response. In this case it might as well be "General Discussion."
What I would prefer is to have a question directed at staff, and staff answer it. I am quite selfishly trying to look after my own time constraints in avoiding lots of player replies, and would suggest asking many or most of these questions in General Discussion, or even double-posting them so player responses can still be garnered. Some of the player responses are both good & appropriate, but in the end that's just not the main point of this particular forum, unlike every other forum on this board.
Most of us simply don't have the time or resources to read every single GDB post in every forum every day. Indeed, the volume of posts on this board is drowningly high and the level of consideration put into each individual post has decreased. It would be delightful to see that trend reverse, as I think we'd all get a lot more out of it.
So, summary: Please, please, please leave the chit-chat to chit-chat channels or the OOC forum and player-player discussion/debate to General Discussion or elsewhere and step up the amount of consideration and seriousness in your posts in general. Leave the Ask the Staff to discussion with the STAFF rather than with EACH OTHER.
-Savak