What is the purpose of closing a thread?

[C_K_Dexter_Haven]

@TBG

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.

We get very uneasy about “let’s all insult So-and-So” when So-and-So isn’t around to defend themselves or reply. It doesn’t feel fair. OK, sure, the person may have been shitting up the place, but they’re still entitled to some dignity and respect as human beans. This is one reason we’re uneasy about some zombie threads as well: it’s unfair to argue with a person who’s no longer around to rebut.

One of our goals is to build a reasonably polite “community” of some sort, and “reasonable politeness” doesn’t seem (to staff, anyhow) to include kicking someone who is unable to fight back.

[Colibri]

@TBG

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”.

That’s a different issue. We generally post an announcement when someone who has been around for awhile gets banned. We do not post an announcement when someone who has only been here for a short time has been banned for trolling or in the case of socking. Since such posters are usually out for attention, we prefer not to give them any more with a public announcement.

If you did contact a moderator, and after finding out the reason for the banning disagreed that the person in question was actually a troll, we might permit a thread disputing the decision. However, I can’t recall any case of this happening. When we ban a short-term troll, it’s usually very obvious what they were doing.

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.

I’m just going to give my personal opinion here, rather than an official position. Personally, I just think that posting just to insult a poster who is no longer here is pointless. Pillorying a carcass doesn’t seem to me to be the sort of thing we want to indulge in here.