Mods should not be allowed to lock threads unless a rule has been broken by OP

It is really annoying when your thread gets locked. My previous threads, such as my area 51 posts all were getting a lot of good discussion going but some mods swooped in and locked the threads. It silences what people want to say and it kills the thread. Chan and Reddit never lock threads unless the OP break rules, and if it is a commentator that breaks a rule, they get there comment removed. This is how it should work on the forums and we should change it to work this way because it is always a shame when your thread is gaining popularity but a mod just voices there opinion/perspective and locks the thread for little to no reason. The only other exception is a /help/ post and the question is clearly answered. I do most of my lurking and posting on /off-topic/, /server-discussion/, and /forum-discussion/ where obvious to the name, most discussion occurs. Silencing these threads which purpose are to start discussion and get the community thinking together really grinds my gears. Thanks for reading or something

 

Pffft lmaoo you just broke the Mini Mod rule

"You are welcome to assist players with their issues. However, you are not allowed to impersonate staff and enforce forums rules. If you have to post "You shouldn't do this" or "You should've posted this elsewhere", then you are mini-modding. This rule is not applicable in Groups for general moderation."

In this case, perhaps it could be severely called Mini Admin :p

Of course I'm misinterpreting the rule.

 

Yeah this isn’t mini modding at all. This post is a suggestion that mods should not lock threads so much. I never impersonated anybody or told any body what to do specifically. I don’t know if I am just stupid or something but I don’t understand why you brought up the mini mod rule, but I guess you said you were miss representing the rule. I just don’t see the point you are making.

 

The reason your area 51 threads were probably closed was that there's nothing else to really talk about. A forum Mod or any Moderator usually locks or removes threads because a rule was broken or the issue that the thread was up for was resolved. Maybe a question has been answered and there's no reason for people to keep replying to the thread. I do feel like locking threads is a good job suited for Moderators.

 

My Area 51 threads may not have been the best examples but my point is that instantly killing a thread at its peak for no reason is frustrating. If a mod feels a thread is not going any where than they should just let it die naturally. Silencing a thread early could prevent some one else from commenting and sparking the discussion even further.
--- Post updated ---

These are all fair reasons for a thread to be locked, but other times some threads get locked for none of these reasons due to a mods opinion. My Area 51 thread was celebrating that my idea got implemented and I just wanted credit, but a mod voiced there opinion and locked the thread, even though many others were still talking. My main concern is just that threads should not be stopped cold in its tracks just because a mod wants to have the final say, as this has happened a few times in the past to me.

 

How absurd for this to be flagged as Mini Mod when I didn't order OP to do anything.

I'm getting my lawyer >:(

 

@swimfan72 As @dallarth stated your thread was probably starting to get a little old and there might be a chance of necro-posting. If a post has been resolved or has already been talked about there's not really much reason that it should be kept open.

 

Alright, so there are major issues with changing the forum rules to such a degree.

I'll just address removing all thread lock / archive reason except for when the OP breaks a rule. This would severely impact the ability of the forum staff to moderate the forums, and in certain cases they wouldn't be able to stop meaningless discussions or flame wars unless the OP conveniently breaks a rule as well. Forum users would be able to go on necro posting sprees or bump threads that have the same topic in order to flood the recent posts section, and while the staff team is able to deal with these issues now, without thread locking it would soon turn hysteric.

What you might have wanted to achieve with this thread is allowing discussions on ideas and suggestions that are locked by Community Management members. This would mean that only one rule needs to be adjusted. Honestly Area 51 was a large exception from how it usually works - while LT and Production do have the last word and not the CoM team, usually when a thread is locked for not being planned, it will not be considered in the near future. Obviously, this means that it's not planned, but may still be implemented in unforeseen circumstances, which is what happened with the Area 51 raid game. Staff members who have the ability to lock threads never lock them according to their personal opinions, but always do so if a rule is broken (forums staff) or if there was a conclusion from the Ideas team, Community Management etc. (idea threads).

These are the fundamentals of how this works on the front-end, and it should not be changed for now in my opinion.

 

These are all fair reasons for a thread to be locked, but other times some threads get locked for none of these reasons due to a mods opinion. My Area 51 thread was celebrating that my idea got implemented and I just wanted credit, but a mod voiced there opinion and locked the thread, even though many others were still talking. My main concern is just that threads should not be stopped cold in its tracks just because a mod wants to have the final say, as this has happened a few times in the past

that's mineplex for ya
--- Post updated ---

The area 51 thread was first made august ninth but people recently went back to it a few days ago to congratulate me on getting the game implemented. That thread got locked for necro posting, so I went and made a new one because plenty still wanted to talk about it. That thread got shut down when people were still talking about it, which did not have a reason to be shut down, which leads to my argument for my reasons towards this post.
--- Post updated ---

I never had any flame wars though in my past posts. No one purposely goes around necro posting to just necro post. Usually there is a good reason to come back to thread, which there was in my case. Most the fundamentals are perfect, but my 50 percent of my locked threads come from mods wanting a final say. For example if you were a mod, you probably would have made the same post you did, but than locked it to end discussion. That is what keeps happening to me, and why I made this thread to discuss upon.

 

I never had any flame wars though in my past posts. No one purposely goes around necro posting to just necro post. Usually there is a good reason to come back to thread, which there was in my case. Most the fundamentals are perfect, but my 50 percent of my locked threads come from mods wanting a final say. For example if you were a mod, you probably would have made the same post you did, but than locked it to end discussion. That is what keeps happening to me, and why I made this thread to dis

not the hero this thread deserves, but the hero this thread needs

 

lmao for that i'm gonna sub ily

 

Thanks bro

 

yes i added somethig so i could see what pepol think and a mod closed it in the first 5 mins

 

This is the only part of your reply I'll address because it was really the only thing I disagreed with. Most other thread lock reasons are valid. But to rebut, I don't think the ability of forum moderators to, you guessed it, moderate the forums... would be compromised at all with changes to how flame wars are handled. Necro-posts are a bit different, but I'll touch on that in a second.

The simple fact about most flame wars is that the OP is not participating in them. Can OP incite a flame war through wording in a thread, or even more explicitly than that? Absolutely, but that is not the majority of cases. Flame wars are usually separate- people in the replies disagree about something strongly, so they result to fruitless arguments. Think about if you and I got so heated that we started throwing around ad hominems and ignored the content of one another's posts; this is a flame war, and even though we disagree on what OP has said, OP is not complicit in what we're doing. We're the ones who deserve the punishment, not OP, and not everyone else who may have wanted to comment on the thread. It's not okay to punish everyone when there is a reasonable solution to everyone's issue: making "flaming" an individual rule and not a blanket thread lock reason. People who participate in flame wars get warned individually the same way someone would get warned for any other rule-breaking post. If they continue, they accumulate more warning points, and so on until it reaches the point where a forum ban is necessary.

"And what if OP incited the flame war and/or is participating in it?" I hear you saying. If the thread is inciting a flame war, then lock it. If OP is involved in the flame war, then keep the thread open, but warn OP. It's pretty simple if you ask me. This is the best way to avoid needless thread locks while still maintaining the integrity of conversations. Nobody gets the short end of the stick that doesn't deserve it.

As I said earlier, I believe thread locks for necro-posting are different. OP may or may not be involved, but the end result is that the thread gets a bump that it shouldn't get; this is unfair for everyone, especially people whose threads are active in the New Posts sidebar. Unfortunately, there is no way, as far as I can tell, to curb this behavior while not locking OP's thread. This rule is fine right now, so I suppose we agree in that regard.

Anywho, the TL;DR here is that no, people would not be able to go on rule-breaking sprees with changes to the flame war thread lock reason, and forum moderation would not suffer any loss, either.

 

Hello!

I completely agree with the OP on this matter. Thread locking has needed to be fixed for a long time and I think this post really outlines what needs to be done.

First off, it's ridiculous that someone that is not the OP can get a thread locked in the first place. Previously on Enjin, this was even more of a problem with moderators locking countless threads. The mere fact of the matter is that, often, OPs spend a huge amount of time on their threads; sometimes hours or even days. I know personally mine take about an hour or two to write. If someone was post boosting my thread (lol) or starting a flamewar in which others, not myself, were partaking, and the result was my thread, into which I put time and effort, being locked, I would be furious. The sad reality is this happens on the forums, and while it's decreased over Mineplex's history, there's still more we can do to fix these problems.

I'd go as far as to call this an exploit. Some players and their friends could get into a fake flamewar or start post boosting a thread with which they disagree and want locked asap. With the current rules, this can happen. It really does need to change and I urge the Forums Team to look into reforming the rules.

I don't believe the problem here his threads in specific. We're talking about generally how the rule needs to be changed.

Thanks,
Techno

 

The OP said nothing about flame wars in particular as a thread lock reason that isn't valid. I do have mixed feelings about it and could understand why it is a rule subject to change in the near future, but in my entire reply I was talking about a scenario where all lock reasons are removed from the rulebook, with the only exceptions already stated in the original post. However, I haven't otherwise witnessed an unfairly locked or archived thread in a very long time, as even flame wars are usually started by something in the original post and there isn't any meaningful discussion happening other than the arguing. Also, forums staff have common sense too, and nothing stops them from only punishing the rule breakers and keeping the thread open if that option is feasible.

 

@Wiz_Techno @ClassN
We more than likely could change the flame war lock reason to make it so a thread isn't locked if the OP isn't partaking in the war. I'm sure the two reasons we lock the entire thread no matter the circumstances currently are because 1. the flame war could have been because of the OP's post in the first place, and we want to stop it there and not have another flame war break out on the same exact thread 2. the flame war could be giant and we'd have to end up deleting most or all replies on a thread because of it anyways.


To the OP:
I'm nearly sure you're talking about this thread, which I made it very clear the lock reason and gave you a pretty good response. The thread was mainly locked due to spreading drama/rumors, as there was some drama and rumors already floating around because of this particular topic. On top of this, your thread was absolutely not promoting any discussion, and even if your thread was to joke around, you did it very poorly.

Just wanted to clear that up.

 

Ok, I guess you don't understand my humor which is understandable because it wasn't well executed to begin with in the thread you linked that I had made. I am curious about the other drama/rumors you said that were already floating around with area 51 topic (unless you don't want to share about them because of the whole avoiding the spread or rumors thing)

 

It has semi died down now, so I'd rather not mention it at all again.