Hi all, it's Cynthia Schupak.  

When my co-author, Jayne Bigelsen, and I wrote our recently  published paper on the results of our 90-participant study, the most difficult part was defining the activity that actually constitutes the condition we've come to know as maladaptive daydreaming.  Our reviewers and editors insisted we read and comment on hundreds of pages of scholarly articles documenting how common mind-wandering, daydreaming, and other non-specific types of "off-task" thought occur in average people.  We found that the best definition fitting the mental activity shared by this community is not best alligned with daydreaming, which is simply too broadly used in the cognitive literature.  We also found that it is often the difficulty in limiting fantasizing time that is of concern to many with MD; thus we referred to literature on other types of compulsive disorders (eating, gambling, shopping, etc.) that are recognized diagnostically, though not by DSM... and we titled our paper "Compulsive Fantasy".  Below is a quote from our paper that illustrates how we arrived at this:

…what was most useful for understanding the mental activity of the present study population were Klinger’s observations that although most people have an intuitive understanding of the meaning of the terms 'daydreaming' and 'fantasy’,

‘‘from a scientific standpoint, these topics of daydreaming and fantasy are considerably more complex. Daydreaming appears to be an essential component of people’s equipment for functioning. Yet, both daydreaming and fantasizing are poorly defined concepts, and they are by no means the same thing’’ (p. 225).

 In 1971, Klinger stated that: ‘‘Most investigators would agree that a fictional tale created by a subject for his own pleasure and for no other purpose constitutes an instance of fantasy’’(p. 6).

 Butler (2006) offered a strikingly similar and useful definition differentiating between daydreaming and fantasy:

The typical daydream begins spontaneously and is experienced as an ongoing series of brief associated thoughts or images triggered by internal or external stimuli or cues and deals most often with current life concerns. In contrast the development of fantasy may be an elected pastime. It is more elaborate and continuous, composed of more pure imagination and directed at self amusement, pleasure, distraction and escape (p. 48).

We recognize that MD is an established label and noted this in our paper, citing the very large online community (you guys) who identify this way...I'm posting this in response to a thread I came upon onsite recently -- and ultimately lost.  Hope this is meaningful to someone here -- and my best to you all.