To save us from ourselves? I can’t really see any harm in leaving every thread open forever.
I’m also wondering why [del]the hard-on that some have for [/del]zombie threads get the danders of many up.
Q: Why have moderation at all? A: To save us from ourselves. Or at least to save *most *of us from *some *of us.
IMO thread locking is a useful way for the refs to blow the whistle & say “Everybody out of *this *pool”. Sure the same folks could go create a new thread & pick up where they left off. But they tend not too. It’s easy to get caught up in the fever of the moment & get outta hand. A quick pause by the refs gives everybody a chance to stop & think. Sometimes fresh equivalent threads get started; most often not.
One of the virtues of the SDMB is that threads tend to stay on the OP’s topic. I’d wager that most of the closures are due to threads wandering off into the weeds as one or more hijacks take over.
As to zombies, search this forum for the word “zombie”; you’ll find there’s a long thread discussing this issue & folks’ opinions pro & con about every 2 weeks. After you’ve read several of them, feel free to ask again what it is you don’t understand.
We do our best not to close threads, but there are times when it seems the best approach, for a variety of reasons – including, but not limited to, “train wrecks”, questions asked and answered, inappropriate discussions under our rules, etc.
On zombie threads, please see FAQs - Guidelines and Etiquette on the Straight Dope Message Boards and note especially Post #4. Some reasons we are uncomfortable about zombie threads is that such threads:
[ul]
[li]Might open old wounds. If there were hard feelings and high emotions long ago, and they’ve been quieted down, why stir them up again? [/li][li]Revisit issues long dead (e.g., some rant by a poster who has since been banned or left) [/li][li]Can be unfair. The people who posted long ago may not be around to respond to your comments, or may have forgot that they even posted there. [/li][li]Can cause confusion and even serious emotional distress – e.g., a thread titled, “NYC attacked by terrorists!” might cause considerable distress, and it might take a while to realize the thread was a zombie from September 2001.[/li]
We don’t consider zombie threads to be a major issue, but we do consider them to potentially pose minor headaches. Some posters, of course, have stronger opinions – especially if they’ve typed out a long post, trying to be helpful to someone’s problem, and then discover the situation was resolved four years ago.
[/ul]
That sounds like a personal problem.
Yeah, we’re the “smartest people on the web” but we need threads closed because it’s just too terribly hard to look at the upper left hand corner of a post?
I vote for no thread-closing ever. (Not that votes matter, but just FTR)
Sorry, Fenris, I think we’re sort of at cross-purposes here. Perhaps that’s my misunderstanding: I took the OP as asking two separate and independent questions,
(1) Why do we close threads? and
(2) Why are some people so angry at zombie threads.
I therefore gave two separate and independent answers. One on why we close threads in general, and one on why we dislike zombies in general.
If the OP intended only one question (“why do we close zombie threads?”) then please ignore my prior response. The answer would then be that we close zombie threads when they:
[ul]
[li]Open old wounds. If there were hard feelings and high emotions long ago, and they’ve been quieted down, why stir them up again? [/li][li]Revisit issues long dead (e.g., some rant by a poster who has since been banned or left) [/li][li]Are unfair. The people who posted long ago are not be around to respond to attacks on their stand.[/li][/ul]
And “We” as a collective group may be the smartest people on the web, but the fact is that not every individual participating on our boards is socially responsible. We have people coming her just to troll and cause trouble. We have spammers who pop up, trying to sell their secret formulae for penile enhancement. We have discussions that get very heated and we feel people need a time out. That’s why we close threads (more generally than just zombification.)
We also sometimes close threads just to keep things neat and tidy (e.g., some of the stickies and announcements).
If a thread dramatically changes in direction, it can be very helpful to close it and start over in a new forum (e.g., a GQ thread turns into a debate or an MPSIMS thread turns into a pitting).
Announcements of bannings and suspensions also get closed frequently because they can turn into a massive pile-on where the bannee (or suspendee) isn’t there to defend him/herself (as Dex mentioned).
Here’s one that was open for 11 minutes before it got closed …
That’s a good example of why threads may be closed just because it is unclear what the OP is trying to do. In this case, Qin was being deliberately disingenuous in his initial post. Thus it’s reasonable to ask him to start over.
In GQ, I will often close threads rather than move them if it’s unclear what the OP’s intent is. Sometimes an OP includes remarks that would suit it for IMHO, GD, or the Pit. In such a case, it may be better to close it so that the OP can reformulate his question or point so that it’s suitable for one forum or another.
If a GQ thread turns acrimonious, I may close it even if it is suitable for IMHO or GD just to give the participants a chance to cool off. Starting the debate over can help to clarify the terms and prevent squabbles from getting out of hand. And it helps out the mods of the new forum not to have to moderate an ongoing scuffle.
I may also close a GQ thread if the factual question has been answered, but people keep hijacking it into side debates even after I’ve given instructions to limit discussion to the question in the OP. I’d rather close a thread than have to start issuing warnings to keep a thread on track.
In most cases when I close a thread in GQ I’ll indicate that a new thread on the subject can be started in a more appropriate forum.
That’s the one I don’t get. Sure, if it’s some attention whore banned for having 10 alt accounts and or massive trolling and you want to stop giving him attention, that would be worth quashing discussion of the banishment, but because they can’t defend themselves? So the fuck what, you want to defend yourself, don’t get banned.
I don’t really care that strongly about it, it’s just one of the things around here that make me scratch my head and say, “well, that’s different.”
I was unaware of that thread, nor have I been a fan of Qin, but it seems to be quite clear that he had a point to the thread, “Your Campaign Ad Ideas” - it’s right there in the title. I think the point was to see us write campaign ads for other candidates, might have been fun (and I actually thought that Qin’s example was pretty good, especially for a confessed conservative.)
We don’t “quash discussion of a banishment.” If someone has an issue with the merits of a banning, they are free to start a thread in ATMB. However, closing the announcement thread itself helps to cut down on the number of drive-by brickbats.
As the subsequent posts in the thread indicated, that wasn’t the point. Basically Qin just put Rick Perry’s campaign ad in Obama’s mouth without explaining that that was what he was doing.
Yeah, but that’s a bit like being the fastest guy in the quadriplegic ward, or the most eloquent girl in the feral children convention, or…
I’m pretty sure Fenris was being facetious anyway, if not actually sarcastic.
Eleven whole minutes of subsequent posts !!!
I told him to start a new thread if he had an actual idea for a topic, and not just a one-off political shot. I infer from the fact that he didn’t that, well, he didn’t.
So what? The problem was with the OP itself, so it might just as well have been closed as soon as it was opened.
In a way, you know, this standard could apply equally to a large percentage of OPs that are not political. Very often people just want to make a “one-off” post and create a thread in order to do so, disguising it as an actual topic. For example, in Cafe Society, something like this:
“Songs that mention a U.S. city and state but only have one and a half stanzas referring to the food that comes from that city.”
Really, threads like this are essentially just started because the OP wants to tell the world that he likes a particular song, and it so happens that the song has this characteristic.
Or, another example from, from IMHO:
“Poll: How many revolutions do you make when you stir your coffee?”
Op doesn’t really give a damn what other people do (probably nobody does)–just wants to tell us all about his very interesting morning ritual.
Twix does her best to save us from ourselves. See the threads she deemed too pointless for MPSIMS.
Re: Colibri’s post, I get trainwrecks, hijacks and zombie closings but if a silly thread is started and we are having fun with it, leave it alone. No purpose is served by closing a harmless thread that we are enjoying on a message board.
You don’t always if a new topic is made to discuss a long time poster banned for continued and repeated jerktitude, but you do quash it sometimes for other reasons. If someone posts “why is so and so banned” it’s likely going to wind up with firm but polite “please PM or email a moderator to discuss this sort of thing, topic closed”.
And I guess my main issue is I don’t see why “drive-by brickbats” need to be cut down on in the first place. Why waste effort on protecting someone who essentially was shitting up the place to the point he’s no longer welcome?
I’m not saying the rule needs to change or it keeps me up at night, I just don’t get why such a practice needs to exist in the first place.