What's a "Closed" Thread?

[Jay Honeck]

I see that the thread on "A new level of jerk-dom" is now "closed", meaning that we can no longer post or answer previous posts in that thread.

I don't think I've ever seen this before. Is this a deliberate action, taken by a wizard behind a curtain somewhere, or does closure happen automatically when a thread reaches a certain size?

If deliberate, I'd be fascinated to read the train of logic behind killing an active topic. The thread had remained (mostly) cordial, didn't tread on the forbidden political or religious topics, and was an on-going, legitimate aviation topic.

IMHO it was a semi-educational, entertaining thread that is sadly all-too-pertinent in today's GA world -- and there is still much to be chewed and digested there.

 

[Jim Logajan]

IMHO it was a semi-educational, entertaining thread that is sadly all-too-pertinent in today's GA world -- and there is still much to be chewed and digested there.

While I thought your view that pilots are (or should be) candidates for saint-hood was naive (and said so in a mocking way) I didn't see why the thread couldn't be continued. We both came from r.a.p where that thread probably would have been considered mild. Not our call, though.

However, should this web site's "Management Council" continue to close threads without warning or explanation, then I'll head on back to Usenet r.a.p where I get to call the shots on what I get to read and post. Last I checked, no one was being forced to read or post to that thread. Why weren't those who were being offended stop reading or posting? Or contact the poster(s) directly with a flag of truce out and work their differences out as I would expect of anyone mature enough to fly?

 

[Jim Logajan]

The management council felt that the tone of the thread was not contributing positively to the community and decided that the best course of action was to close the thread. Sometimes all points have been made in a conversation and it's in everyone's best interest to let it go.

That's not specific enough for me. (Besides, I still don't know the fate of the courtesy car.)

Did anyone complain about the thread?

 

[Jim Logajan]

Oh good grief -- those "unseen, unexplained censors" were doing you a favor.

Southerners have the best term for this sort of thing: "Hush."

Since the MC has effectively said "Hush" does that mean its members are southerners? No yankees? Is the south rising again!?

It looked to me like the thread was dying of its own accord and any "community damage" (whatever that is - good luck finding a common definition) had reached its limit.

 

[Jim Logajan]

You don't pay the bills to keep this board alive though...

I couldn't find the slot to stuff coins into. Besides, when it comes to contributing to the delinquency of forum moderators I've already paid some dues:

I've moderated (and co-moderated - and still moderate!) the Usenet newsgroups sci.nanotech, sci.physics.plasma, misc.business.consulting, misc.business.moderated, misc.business.marketing.moderated, and misc.entrepreneurs.moderated. I've been moderating Usenet newsgroup forums for about ten years. I wrote about 4000 lines of Python code to allow remote co-moderators to perform their duties in a collaborative manner with as simple a GUI as I could afford the time. I made the code open source.

So I have many years of first-hand experience with moderation being a "thankless volunteer" position. But I got to learn things, like how to quickly remove thousands of messages sent to my e-mail address from a poster showing me just what he thought of my attempts at diplomatic rejection of one of his posts. (This back when my connection was much slower and e-mail client software unable to cope with such a flood.)

After browsing both a number of older and more recent POA threads, and comparing them to the thread that was just shut down, it is my opinion that either the moderation criteria is inconsistently applied or not well formulated.

On the one hand I think the moderators seem to have a light hand (good,) but I think they erred in this case by not first posting a request to the thread that people should, if not kiss and make up, demonstrate a bit more self-restraint lest the admins have to shut the thread down. I think that, ideally, specifics should be given as much as possible and time permits.

I always made it my personal goal to discuss moderation decisions as publicly as possible. I do not understand why a moderator should take the heat for acceding to those who are insulted or upset by emotional disagreements while simultaneously protecting the identity of those individuals. It does those individuals no favors with respect to learning how to cope with such social aspects.

(The Usenet newsgroup software was set up such that each post had to be reviewed for approval or rejection - and rejections were as specific as we could make without undo time investment. We'd say "If you can remove sentence X, your post would be approved," or whatever was appropriate. We had canned responses and templates for certain common rejection classes, though.)

 

[Jim Logajan]

I'm not particularly interested in recovering my money - I've gained a lot of friends and knowledge through this community and don't mind giving back.

I assume one problem with accepting donations at this point would be further dilution of control and decision making, even if indirectly?

(A pity so many have adopted vBulletin; perhaps because it was one of the first? Looks like there are now a large number of options to choose from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software )