I was just going to leave this mess alone, but I've realized that won't solve this to anyones satisfaction and besides, I never did understand the concept of "Discretion being the better part of valour"
I am going to do this as dispassionately as possible and I would hope that those who wish to comment will do the same.
Here goes.
the 48th regulator said:
So when the Moderator that has locked the thread states that anyone who has a post of relevence to add, may just PM that mod, you are in the belief that this is just fluff and no one should do anything?
As for pruning a thread, then we just feed the ones saying we are sanitizing and oppressing peoples views by deleting posts.
A double edge sword, wouldn't you agree?
dileas
tess
If you read what I wrote in regards to the pruning of threads you will see that I was talking about other site on which I am a moderator. this site does not support itself with advertisements and therefore periodically a prune is done to archive inactive threads in order to save bandwidth.
ArmyVern said:
Let's have them then.
Which specific threads and why/why not should there be a lock in your view?
Hopefully, it's not just because you personnally feel the topic is irrelevant (like Global Warming) ... because there's a lot of others here who find it IS relevant.
This topic http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/72459.0.html was closed because
I locked the religion thread last night, because I felt, personally - that is was getting heated, no progress was being made, and that it was destined to end up the same way all the other religion threads have ended up.
22 minutes after this inflammatory post by NL_engineer.
Well as T6 said, after the US gained Independence they were faced with huge debt. So with a 70 Mill debt in the 1700's how do you think their economy was?
I am still not seeing your point
Why? because a mod thought
This thread is going 90 miles per hour down a dead-end street.
but worse than that, it was a preemptive strike against a specific subject based on nothing more than a feeling. Why is it that some topics like this one for example http://forums.army.ca/forums/threads/71458.0.html can be managed with a warning and others get the preemptive boot?
With the complaints of Mods concerned about how much effort it takes to properly moderate such a large site (which I agree with by the way) why on earth would you want to spend your time locking innocuous threads?
I guess I see the role of Mod as a policeman who watches and is bound to observe but can not legally act until the law is actually broken.
Michael O`Leary said:
I'm interested in better understanding your frame of reference. Can you tell us how large the forums you monitored were, how broad their scope of subject matter was and what nature of topics were the hot-button subjects you had to deal with the most intractable user interactions?
Further, can you explain in detail exactly what methods you used to ensure that every Moderator used the same balanced approach that ensured that no threads were ever locked that you might disagree with the decision?
What are we going to play a game of my site is bigger than your site?
Tanknet, heard of it?
Yes, basically to avoid arbitrary locking of threads each and every topic was allowed to die a natural death as the people in the forum lost interest. Conversely if a topic morphed into another subject the new subject was split from the old one and the old one was permitted to die. Also it was very rare that a topic got locked at all, the mods instead dealt with the individual causing the problem. None of what I call the old army "Collective discipline" mentality.
So there you have it.
I have a philosophical disagreement with locking a thread on a
discussion board while
discussion is ongoing. When you stop to think about it that action makes no sense and is counterproductive to the purpose of a discussion forum in the first place.
There is a huge debate, possibly the most important debate going on in this country right now on freedom of speech. Now I know and acknowledge that this site is privately owned and as such it is Mike's to do with and manage as he pleases but if we can't at least have open and complete dialog here, in a place where we all agree with that principal, what does that say about our commitment to free speech?
By the way muskrat89, I'm not trying to single anyone out here. I too have a full time job (quiet
you ) and did not have the time or inclination to sort through all the posts it would have taken to make a more complete argument.
Oh, i will avail myself of the contact the Mod thingy more from now on. That's a promise, and a threat.