Thread closing

[drew70]

I'm curious about this phenomenom. I've seen one thread closed and another thread contain multiple requests for closing. This absolutely amazed me. I considered asking why anybody would ever want to close a thread but I find I'm already able to anticipate the answers..."When a thread becomes 'unproductive,' it should be closed"..."we close a thread when 'enough has been said' about the topic"...."when it no longer 'contributes to the good of the community'"...Am I warm?

It just seems to me that closing a thread is like saying, "Okay boys and girls, settle down now. We're not going to talk about this any more. Let's all open our Phonics Books to page 12." I can't help but see it as a badly disguised form of censorship. The moderation thing, I can at least understand it, if not wholeheartedly support it. People's feelings get hurt by textual abuse. Many fled AMT for this reason, I can dig that. But closing a topic of discussion is different, more political, somehow. Is anybody else besides me a little creeped out by this form of restriction?

No, instead of asking why anybody would want to close a thread, I'll ask a different question. When a thread is closed, is it supposed to be understood by all that the topic is never to be raised again? Isn't that at least inferred by the closing of a thread? If not, then people would just start a new thread about the same topic, would they not?

In my opinion, no thread should ever be closed, unless it is off topic. There is simply no valid reason for closing an on-topic discussion. My guess is that certain individuals tire of seeing whatever particular topic come around, and they complain to the moderators. Max posted a really cool rant about complainers. A post with which I agreed on many counts. Complaining is complaining, whether object of complaint is the quality of videos, or the recurrance of unpalatable topics. Let's stop closing threads and let them die their natural deaths.

Just food for thought. 🙂

 

[P50]

First,,,

The first message the mods sent me (I assume it was a respond-o-matic robot of some sort) was a message that clearly stated that censorship on the TMF exists by design and policy. I assume that a lot of others also got the same message

Secondly,,,

The TMF mods are <I>NOT</I> government agents, nor is the TMF a government agency. Censorship (choose your definition differently if you want) requires official sanctioned force. Examples would be locations of secret military stuff I really don't <I>want</I> to know in the first place. (This assumes America, the land of the free and all that; try some african governments for a truly different flavor of what censorship is; you are free to print anything that doesn't throw a bad light on the existing government or the men who run it.)

So,,,,

No, I am not the least bit creeped. Truthfully, I'm comforted. (And no, I'm not friends with any of the Mods, and I have no points to score with them.)

Thirdly,,,,

Never raise a topic again ? I have vaguely tossed around the idea that after X-number of threads, almost all (if not all) topics and threads are essentially repeats. It's a very similar idea to the old maxim, "<I>History Repeats Itself</I>". This isn't unique to the TMF itself, but could reasonably apply to any discussion board. Someone some years back took this idea to a parody and published the lifeline of a usenet thread. I can't provide a concrete reference, but it seemed to apply to a very large majority of usenet threads. Hey, if all country and western songs can fit into about eleven different categories, think of how much better we in the tickling community are doing.

Fourthly,,,,

(Is "Fourthly" a word ?) If the mods never closed any thread, then TMF = AMT. Really and truly they must occasionally do that. No, I don't like it (nor do they, in real life) but without it, well, I see the number of posts you have, and I don't know your lurking history, but believe me, they absolutely <I>must</I> have this power and absolutely <I>must</I> execute its enforcement capability whenever it is due. I forget the last non-productive thread that was spawning, but until you've seen it happen, you don't understand the importance of the big bang theory for the TMF. (And all this time you thought the big bang theory was from Astro-Physics or something; now you know; it's a tickling thing.)

 

[Myriads]

Threads are closed when they continue to generate moderation problems, while at the same time generating no new facts, points, or views.

It's one thing to spend our time moderating threads that are activly contributing to discourse. Quite another, to spend that time when the posts being dealt with are the nth rehash of the same thing.

If new material surfaces on a closed threads topic, any user if free to open a new thread. Opening a new thread to rehash will just produce a thread delete or lock.

Myriads

 

[dodger]

I'm curious about this phenomenom.

closing a thread is like saying, "Okay boys and girls, settle down now. We're not going to talk about this any more. Let's all open our Phonics Books to page 12." I can't help but see it as a badly disguised form of censorship.

Yes I agree totally. It's ridiculous. If it was off topic, then sure. But why close a thread that is on topic and some members obviously still are interested in talking about? I feel very uneasy about how effortlessly the mods push the button and, well, quite honestly act like they are gods who know whats best for us little people who don't have the "close button."

 

[Haltickling]

The importance on closing threads gets blown up badly out of any reasonable proportion. On the first 10 pages of threads in Tickling Discussion (roughly 250 threads altogether), only one thread has been closed. This special thread originated from September 2001 and was drawn out of its grave for no reason at all. Talk about flogging a dead horse... In General Discussions, there's not a single closed thread on the first 10 pages.

I was a mod for over a year, and there were less than a handful of threads closed during my time. We even reopened a closed thread due to several requests, and we never closed threads lightly, at a private whim.

It is understandable that some people don't want to be regulated at all. I don't know how they manage in real life which is in fact full of regulations. There are a lot of unregulated places on the Internet to go to if this TMF seems too restrictive for those people (no, drew70, I'm not talking about you). Most people like the TMF for its peaceful atmosphere (as P50 observed rightly), and sometimes peace takes some 'godly' interference to keep it that way... 😉

 

[Dave2112]

There are times when a thread is locked, rather than pulled completely. There may be insightful posts at the start, which turn into a useless flame-war or something. However, the original message might still serve some purpose. Therefore, leaving it up might still be better than getting rid of it. Locking it simply stops the inevitable continuation of some redundant pissing match.

Yeah...that's censorship, alright... 🙄