This one about unsuccessful threads. I may not have had anything to offer in the other threads cited, but the general question about those threads is something I could have responded to.
It had one response already, and was closed in less than an hour, so it didn’t even have a chance.
IMHO it was a legitimate closing. It seemed to be trying to make an endrun around the no bumping rule.
I just think that if all dopers collectively had a sufficiently dark sense of humor, nobody would have responded to that thread. 
The OP – who, BTW, has not protested my ruling – was basically requesting that people post for the sake of posting, which is against the rules. If he (or anyone else) wishes to open a more general discussion of why some threads don’t get any traction, that would be fine.
twickster, MPSIMS moderator
Ha ha, I just came in to say, it was big fun to arrive at the board today, and see
“I’d like to see Zeldar’s…”
I know he’s married and stuff. But it’s still funny.
That is all.
I wasn’t protesting. Just making a request. Merely closing the thread and leaving it readable with all the links isn’t going to do much to prevent the problem described.
I hope Zeldar is reading and will open a new thread simply about:
Go for it yourself. I spent half an hour gathering data for that thread and I’ve had my say.
I appreciate your interest, TriPolar, but I fear I have worn out my welcome on discussing “loser threads.” This isn’t the first one on the subject that has been zapped. Maybe I can participate in someone else’s thread that has a better chance of staying open.
I’ll consider that later. Hard for me to do sincerely since all my threads have been smashing (and flaying) successes.
Something I do before opening a new thread is to “prime the pump” so to speak. I’ll PM about 100 to 200 random posters on the board with a movie style advance notice “you’ve read wiki and were awed, you’ve seen posters question the very fabric of our existence in GD, but now, one of the most shocking questions to ever be posted in GQ: do slugs fart?..This thread coming soon to a message board near you (summer 2012)”
It usually goes viral and I have people begging me to open the thread early.
FWIW, I’m pretty sure he hasn’t fought you because he knows it’s pointless, not because he agrees with your assessment of the post being against the rules. As evidenced by the discussion we had the last time a thread on this topic was closed (by you), and the fact that he spent so much time creating the post in the first place. If he knew it were against the rules, why would have have done that?
And I’ll also point out that that previous thread was discussing exactly what you said it was okay to discuss this time–WHY some thread topics get no replies. So it doesn’t surprise me that the message he apparently took away is “Don’t discuss threads with no replies.”
I find a few gratuitous insults of atheists, liberals, Canadians, Europeans, left-handed feminists and cat-lovers gets a thread started nicely. It’ll go for at least two or three pages before the mods close it and issue warnings to all concerned.
Zeldar, this isn’t a slam or anything, but can I ask what your obsession with post statistics is about? Any element of OCD in there?
Can’t say about the OCD, but it’s one of the aspects of board behavior that does intrigue me. And even though you didn’t ask about zombies I can’t understand the mixed messages that keep coming about them.
One thing is for certain, I’m learning to live with the idea that not every thread I start is going to appeal to anybody else. 
FWIW, I’m not sure what the point of stating that the OP didn’t protest is. Is it something along the lines of “Why are you getting worked up over something the OP doesn’t care enough to defend?” or something?
What thread was that?
I see that this thread from 2006 is still open
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=383560&highlight=loser+threads
Sometimes it seems to me that half of the traffic on this board is posting for the sake of posting. Just take for example poll threads, and see how many people post to tell us how they voted in the poll–and nothing more than that.
I think posting for the sake of posting, and openly asking people to post for the sake of posting, are two entirely different things.
Oh, I understand that. I just think it’s amusing that one is frowned upon that the other is pretty much run of the mill–that’s all.
Just possibly you could read the offending OP in that other thread and decide if I was asking people to post “for the sake of posting.”
I make it a policy of not fighting City Hall here, and I have no major objection to that other thread being closed. But I don’t believe much attention is being paid to what the other thread was really about. Many assumptions about what I was really asking for are projections by those who have read but nor bothered to understand, as best I can tell.
I would have no real problem with this thread being closed for all the good it’s doing.
You seemed to be asking people to post in your threads that had zero replies because you felt bad that you had threads with zero replies, so getting any kind of reply in those threads would change your stats and thus make you feel better.
You don’t seem to be concerned that the threads generate actual conversation, only that they get a reply so that they are no longer zero reply threads.
How are we misunderstanding what the thread was about?