I wanna talk a little about my personal attitudes to thread locking and the forums.
The first and most important thing to say is that this is NOT designed to be an attack on the moderators or even an attack on Fumbbl policy. Nor is this a knee jerk reaction to any one thread.
Instead it is a feeling i have had for some time and i figured my blog was a good place to put it.

i have a lot of respect for our current team of monkeys and several of them i would consider to be friends. Some of them have had to deal with me for misbehaviour on the forums over the past year (i'm trying very hard to be good and not to get drawn into flamewars these days) and they have been nothing short of profesional and fair.
It is partly because of this respect that i feel that i am able to raise a disagreement with current policy and put forward my views. With mods in the past i would not have felt at ease doing this.

I feel that over the past year or so (forgive me for being lazy but i couldn't be bothered to go back and check exactly how long) there has been an increase in thread lockings and i havn't always agreed with the reasons for doing so.

It's no secret that i enjoy the entertainment provided by the more controvercial/ argumentative threads but i genuinely do believe that there is an important place for these within the forums and as part of forming the comunity. Without debate and passion a comunity becomes dull and stale. If debate is stifled unnecesserily we end up with forums that are filled with endless "i rolled a double 6, should i take leader?" topics and little else.
No i do not think that the forums should be unmoderated and i do not think that we should all be alowed to insult each other as much as we like and yes i am well aware that i have over stepped the mark on many occasions. I just feel that maybe there are alternatives to locking.
Shadow notably often warns people in topics to clean it up or risk the topic being closed but i'd personaly like to see an extension of this.
When individuals overstep the mark i'd like to see them recieve a warning and/ or have their posts edited. If they continue then give them a ban from teh forums. it does not have to nessesitate the whole forum being closed. I realise this may involve a little more work for the volunteers who man this site. i'm hoping that some of them may agree that it's worth it.
Equaly there is often a feeling of "i don't think theres any more to be said so all move along now" in some lockings. In some cases this is undoubtably true and plenty of topics end up going round and round in circles but if they are not in breach of the rules why end them. If they're dull they WILL die out quickly. If they carry on then they serve some perpose even if its just a source of mindless escapism for the contributers (isn't that why we're all here?). Locking them does not seem to serve an obvious perpose to me.

If it is official policy then so be it. If individual mods disagree with me then thats cool. I will (try to) obey the rules laid down. I just think that the overall comunity suffers a little each time a thread is locked when other tactics may have worked.

Thankyou for taking the time to read this. I hope it doesn't come accross as whiney/ mindless criticism.


Incidentally i was right about the comunity not disolving into annarchy with the removal of SwearBot ;P