You closed two threads that had “run their course” today. This isn’t a pitting and I was losing interest in one and didn’t care about the other, so no axe to grind, but…could you explain your reasoning?
I know other mods have done this from time to time and I’ve never understood why: if a thread really has “run it’s course”, no-one would be posting to it. If it’s just the same two or three people riffing off each other, again, I’d understand (post-padding, maybe?)
But in both of these cases, the threads were limping along-why not leave them open until they die a natural death?
As I said, I’ve got no anger, no bone to pick, no gauntlet to throw down, no invective to hurl…just curiosity. Would you mind sharing what your reasoning is when you close threads that “run their course”?
I know that there used to be a “number of pages in the thread” limit away back when (say…12 pages, maybe?) but I thought that got fixed a few upgrades back.
In any case, the “Hitler” one was only a few pages long…so I’d guess that wasn’t the issue.
But why does off course matter? I guess what I’m asking is “If it’s off-course, but people are posting to it, what harm does it do? Who cares?” (Giraffe possibly, but other than him… :D)
IANAGiraffe (or a mod), but I think it’s sometimes a good idea. The Hitler thread, in particular, had really become three threads - the original case of Hilter v. Bakery, the Quasi support thread and then some weird thing with kitty pics. When a thread becomes that muddied, maybe it makes sense to close it and let people open new ones on the same topics in better suited fora. That way people looking to vent about Hitlette aren’t competing with pictures of kitties, and MPSIMS kitty huggers aren’t distracted by Quasi’s health issues. Otherwise, we might as well not have fora and threads at all, but one hugemongous chat thread.
There have been other times I’d agree that mods are too quick to interfere with natural selection, and I’d like to hear some rationales for those closures, but this one I thought was a good play.
There’s no consistent answer, because circumstances change from forum to forum; however, in a general sense, some threads are closed because they’ve devolved into a conversation between two people. Sometimes a few more posters are involved, but when the thread turns into a chat session with the same people posting again and again, it’s usually time for a mercy kill. It helps keep the front page of the forum from being littered with the same threads day in and day out, and allows other threads to get their chance to be seen.
We used to close a lot more threads in MPSIMS due to length and database issues (which doesn’t seem to be a problem these days), or because a game thread had turned into general chat and had long since abandoned the actual game. (Game threads were a special case: we purposely limited the number of them at any given time so they wouldn’t take over the forum. Once the game was over and the talk had turned to general matters, it was time for a new game thread to replace it.) On the other hand, I don’t think I’ve ever closed a thread in Cafe Society due it ending up as general chatter. Of course, that may simply be because Cafe Society has an obvious purpose: you talk about the arts, and once interest in the thread’s subject has died down, then the thread does, too.
Same goes, I suspect, with the Pit. People are there to vent, and once the argument has been hashed out–or abandoned–and once the anger has died down and all that’s left are the bad jokes, then the thread has outlived its original purpose. If people want to continue their amiable conversation, they’re welcome to start a thread in MPSIMS. (The Pit mods are welcome to refine or correct anything I’ve mentioned.)
Ultimately, you prune the occasional thread so as to keep the front page of the forum from becoming stagnate.
