It was my understanding (or at least my interpretation) that the “joke thread” against which there is an unwritten, though not unspoken, proscription, was a thread whose sole purpose is the telling of jokes.
Is a thread that attempts to use satire or parody to make a point necessarily a “joke” thread? If so, are such rhetorical devices therefore forbidden in the Pit?
I don’t envy Lynn Bodoni her responsibilities here, but it seems to me that, more than once, threads that were more than simply “joke threads” have been closed (and their OPs are being suspended) because she has arbitrarily labeled a thread as a “joke thread.”
Speaking for myself, I think satire and parody have their place in the Pit, if there’s a point to be made, and frankly Lynn’s zero-tolerance for an ill-defined transgression has had a chilling effect on my posting here (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing).
Would it be reasonable, in such instances, for a moderator to require the OP to justify the thread, rather than summarily closing it? To ask the OP to make his/her point a little more clearly, or risk having the thread closed as a “joke thread”? Or perhaps someone else has another suggestion?