Question to the mods regarding thread locking

[enrious]

I have a question to the mods regarding your locking policin in General RPG.

A few days ago, Piratecat locked a thread that was essentially a copy/paste of something the poster likely recieved via email - one of those "20 amazing things you never knew."

PC locked it with the notation to the effect that it was completely OT and had nothing to do with General RPG. (And I'm fine with that, I don't disagree with the action taken.)

However, both in the days before and after that thread, there have been numerous threads that are just as OT, such as the various "person X died, bummer" threads, the obligatory "Happy Easter" thread, a "Daves" thread, even a USA v. Canada hockey thread. And so on.

I'm curious as to what the criteria are for locking threads in General RPG as it doesn't seem quite consistent in usage and would like some guidance from you, the mods.

 

[Morrus]

There's no policy. Using a policy means that "rules lawyers" will immediately use it to their advantage, finding holes and claiming it's not "against the policy".

It's all case-by-case and a judgement call by the moderator at the time.

 

[enrious]

No guidelines?

 

[Morrus]

Yeah - try and avoid OT stuff. If you post OT stuff, you're risking that it might get closed. The again, it might not.

 

[Lady Dragon]

What is ot stuff sorry I'm new

 

[Crothian]

ot = off topic

 

[Lady Dragon]

Thanks

 

[Mark]

What is ot stuff sorry I'm new

But we all feel you've proven to be a wonderrful addition to our little sandbox...

 

[Darkness]

I can't - and won't - speak for Piratecat or any moderator other than myself, but I think that the thread that was closed was - IMNSHO - about a less worthwile (for the community, that is) topic than the others. YMMV, of course - if so, too bad!

"person X died, bummer"
The death of a famous person is tragic to many.

the obligatory "Happy Easter" thread
Like you said - it's obligatory. Seriously, though, threads of this kind are par for the course - you'll get them every year on every message board of a certain size. And why not? Easter is part of the culture (if not religion) of most of us here, after all.

a "Daves" thread
They are all Daves. They are happy about it. They want to find like-named people. They aren't harming anyone. So who am I to stop them?

a USA v. Canada hockey thread
I won't even try to estimate how many sports fans are on these boards - not to speak of the fact that most people here are Americans or Canadians. So it's important to many, many people in the community.

And what was the thread that was closed about? 20 "amazing" things you never knew? Standard random internet fare, from the sound of it - a click a dozen... If you think otherwise, though, you'd best remember that deeds say more than a thousand words - and act accordingly: Give me a link!


Again, as Morrus already pointed out, it's a judgement call in every case - I just wanted to show you the subconscious thought processes of this particular moderator. I hope it helps a bit...

 

[Piratecat]

Sorry, just saw this!

Off topic threads are judged on a case by case basis. In this particular case, the poster copied email spam and posted it; I couldn't figure out any reason he might have done so, other than the fact he was bored. Even worse, most of the "facts" were wrong. It was (in my opinion) nothing but clutter, and so it got closed.

This was especially egregious because a week earlier I had posted guidelines for what kind of OT posts to avoid. He may not of seen them, but they were up for 6-7 days.

We're usually pretty liberal about OT threads, but the line has to be drawn somewhere... and recycled internet debris, cut and pasted, turned out to be the place.