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Thread Locked - "You can not reply to this topic" - ( to which I reply WTF??? )

Who's your Tzaddi?

23:32 / 09.06.03

It may not be the most popular of topics to all but the "May Warning" thread has been contributed to quite a bit in the last few weeks. People are paranoid. People are witty. People are brilliant. Some are just plain foolish. Most continued to post just to bash the initiator of the thread.
After much research on my part, I had the reply to the questions which were posted concerning "Soma" et al., which I wished to share without starting another thread and...

WAAAAAAAAAAAAHEYYYYYYYYYY! The thread is locked?

Who did this? BC? Was it not established that the initiator could lock a thread - and in some cases, Moderators? Why has this been locked? Really, I am curious. Instead of closure on the thread, we find much of the same smart ass remarks that have gone on through.
I don't want to cause a commotion but:

a) Who locked the thread?

b) Why?

c) Why no notice of it?

d) What does this mean to other threads yet to come?

I hope there will be a reply because this truly *ahem* "ruffles my feathers"

Thank you -
Tzaddi

A Haus of Minions

23:45 / 09.06.03

Well, nobody can lock a thread. It takes three votes to do it, not including, IIRC, the originator of the request - it's far more votes than are required to move a thread, and I think as many as are required to delete one.

So, somebody proposed it, and three other people agreed.

Normally, I would ask in the thread if anyone had any objections to locking that thread, as I do for moving and deleting threads, but I don't think we have a specific code of conduct on how moderators should handle this. My guess would be that the lock request was made by a Magick mod because BC's anti-Semitism was sufficiently threadwarping as to remove any chance of the thread being righted again. Also, because it was rotted to the bone, and finally because it was no longer May, at a guess.

All seem like reasonably good reasons to me. Possibly a spin-off thread on the meaning of "Soma" would be worthwhile. Certainly I'd be curious.

Who's your Tzaddi?

00:04 / 10.06.03

Haus-

Thank you for your prompt response. I am sure you understand my concern (I haven't seen a locked thread in quite some time) and was curious as to what this could mean in the future. I appreciate your answer and thank you for taking the time to reply.

Tzaddi

00:44 / 10.06.03

Locked most likely because May is over.

01:35 / 10.06.03

Before anyone else accuses me of either "issues" or "contact" with the 'May Warning' originator, I'd like to make it clear that I played no part whatsoever in the locking of this thread. Mea most certainly not culpa.

11:36 / 10.06.03

Just so as to be transparent, I was one of the people to approve the locking of the thread. To my mind the anti-semitism was sufficient reason to do so. If people want to talk about issues arising from that thread, there is nothing to stop them, but I didn't think the thread itself was salvageable.

Nick's Experimental Wrongness

15:28 / 10.06.03

I'm not a mod in that forum. But that was one thread of enormous lock-me-immediately-I-have-rotted-to-mush-and-mayhemness.

Stoat-ROW ROW FIGHT THE POWAH
(prev. Stoatie. Stoatie? STOATIE.)

18:46 / 10.06.03

With Nick on this one. That thread "made" me out-and-out rude to another poster, something I make a point of not being, and feel bad about in retrospect. That's gotta say something.

23:04 / 10.06.03

Nazi lizard milkmen, though.

Nick's Experimental Wrongness

02:16 / 11.06.03

Yeah, but everyone's got those.

DRR... DRR... DRR...

19:32 / 11.06.03

It was a mercy killing.

It was I that did the dirty deed and proposed the lockdown. My reasons were threefold:

1) May is over.
2) Eight pages is a lot of space to be given over to a very vague prophecy of doom.
3) The anti-semetism, including a statement by BC that "Hitler had the right idea". Not going to be much useful discussion after that one, I feel.

You can all jump up and down screaming about censorship now. I think that threads like this do absolutely nothing but drag The Magick down and contribute to its "ghetto" reputation. I try to be fairly hands-off in my mod duties, but this one just needed to die.

On the plus side, I did find out that there's actually a punk band called The Milkman Conspiracy. Which is nice.

22:56 / 11.06.03

I added my voice to the moderation action. That thread was the Barbelith equivalent of someone wanting the general public to see them play with their winkle in all its weird, shrivelled, hateful and obscure glory.

18:50 / 14.06.03

Mommy, what's a "winkle"?

DRR... DRR... DRR...

09:52 / 15.06.03

It's an edible mollusc.

01:16 / 20.06.03

Now, the "Andrew and PMs" thread appears to be locked.

I wanted to reply to it.

11:17 / 20.06.03

I'd have to second that. I haven't been here long enough to make worthwhile contributions to this area of the site, but I do feel that one should be capable of doing so.

12:58 / 20.06.03

I proposed that, so I guess you can blame me. It's a fairly safe bet that it was going to descend into another round of pointless bickering and tiresome accusations, in the manner of every other thread about Knodge, ever, and the recent >0< /Haus PMs debacle. That's something this forum has had way too much of, and it's not why it's here.

I think there's a valuable discussion to be had on the (ab)use of private messages, but that wasn't it - it was already being pulled off-track as soon as it began. It's something we do need to talk about, but preferably without reference to specific individuals.

Old brown-eye is back

13:41 / 20.06.03

As one that's followed this often hugely entertaining debacle, I have to say it would have been nice if the discussion had actually been given the chance to descend into pointless bickering and tiresome accusations - or something else, even - rather than being smothered at birth. On top of that, the fact remains that both fridge and Waxy Dan (and others, I'm sure) wanted to contribute to it and now they can't - which strikes me as kind of sucky.

But what do I know.

13:56 / 20.06.03

Them's the breaks. Like I say, fridge and waxy dan are perfectly at liberty to start a new thread about whatever it was they wanted to talk about.

Old brown-eye is back

15:06 / 20.06.03

As long as it didn't break down into supposedly pointless whatever, in which case someone would shut it down sharpish. Which of course, would be the breaks.

15:11 / 20.06.03

Yup.

Old brown-eye is back

15:33 / 20.06.03

Well, I guess you've spoken.

A Haus of Minions

15:48 / 20.06.03

I was just msging somebody about how useful a "cup of tea" button would be on Barbelith - a device that stops you from posting anything until you have had a nice cup of tea. I think the threadlockings in the Policy lately have been much the same. If Fridge or Waxy or KMH have something to say about PMs that really hasn't been covered, and really would add something, then they can now start a new thread. That will involve thinkign about what they want to say, putting in a topic abstract, and other such matters. During which time they can think about what they want to say, why they want to say it and how it will improve Barbelith's understanding of itself (probably the main aim of the Policy and Help forum).

Sort of like a traffic-calming measure.

15:52 / 20.06.03

Well, me and two other people. Distributed moderation, anyone?

I don't see why you're trying to make an issue out of this, but then I don't see why a lot of things that have been raised here recently are an issue, so it's probably something wrong with me. I should probably point you to the FAQ, though, as it should go some way to explaining why that thread was locked (although I thought I'd already done that...).

Third time's a charm: the thread was locked because it was becoming an issue of personalities again, not one of board policy. I agree that there's an important policy issue here, but it's important enough that it needs to be tackled without the clutter of "X said this, then Y claimed that, so I said the other."

Old brown-eye is back

17:01 / 20.06.03

Shutting a thread down just because you don't like the way the conversation might end up going (after a whopping 10 posts even) seems to me to be jumping the gun a little bit, is all. If you felt strongly enough to do that, why not put you moderator hat on, actually get involved with the thread and try and lead it back to the light yourself?

As for that one in particular, I didn't think it was actually getting that ugly. As a matter of fact, at least some of Flowers' contribution towards the end was an attempt to respond to the Hauster's initialy query - who knows where it might have gone from there.

Tell me if I'm being naive.

A Haus of Minions

18:21 / 20.06.03

If you felt strongly enough to do that, why not put you moderator hat on, actually get involved with the thread and try and lead it back to the light yourself?

I'm not sure there was a light. I had asked a question about how to treat private messages from Knodgey, Randy provided an opinion, so did Flowers. At that point Knodge had already set himself to rotting the thread. There are quite enough threads already to talk about the behaviour of Knodge, including the latest one started by >0<.., and this thread was no longer going to be able to be used to discuss how to treat PMs.

So, movign to lock it and seeign what other people think seems reasonable, I think. Not incontestable, but Randy and three other (I think threadlocking takes four votes in toto, doesn't it?) moderators thought the case was good enough. So, if you would like to talk more about the correct treatment of PMs, I'd suggest looking at that thread, and possibly also at bio k9's response in >0<'s latest thread also, which refers to it, and starting a new thread. If you want to follow the tangent on the Knowledge, then >0<'s tangent thread is the place to go. I'm not entirely sure what you're achieving by continuing to argue the toss over the locking of a particular thread rather than picking up any of the elements in that thread that you might have wanted to discuss and starting a new thread, but it's certainly your right to do so if it makes you happy.

18:27 / 20.06.03

I submitted the request immediately after posting to it myself, so the posts that follow on from mine weren't present at the time. Those points are undoubtedly valuable, but the fact that it was a thread about one specific person means that they would have become drowned out sooner rather than later. I firmly believe that, as it's what's happened every single time in the past - much as I'd love to think that we'd be able to break the cycle that I've mentioned in >0< 's thread, the weight of evidence suggests that, yes, that's a slightly naive hope. I submitted a similar request for much the same reason early on in the life of the >0< /Haus thread which didn't go through, and we all know what happened there...

Basically, I'm trying to play it safe, as wherever Andrew - or, indeed, *any* of these long-standing feuds - gets involved it's proved best in the past to err on the side of caution.

Old brown-eye is back

18:52 / 20.06.03

I'm not sure what any of this is achieving Haus, quite frankly, but sometimes you've just got to plow on. With regard the locking question, it just struck me as worth bringing up given the amount of threads that have been killed off in that way recently, as well as the two or three people that obviously aren't happy with the situation. Point taken about Knodge-rot, though.

On a sunny friday afternoon when I'm trying to make the time pass, I'll happily argue the toss over whatever is foolish enough to cross my path I think you'll find.

DRR... DRR... DRR...

20:18 / 20.06.03

With regard the locking question, it just struck me as worth bringing up given the amount of threads that have been killed off in that way recently,

About... two or three?

as well as the two or three people that obviously aren't happy with the situation.

So, two or three locked threads, two or three dissatisfied customers. Not a terrible score by any means. Can we start doing the cheese puns now?

Andrew C*** passing himself of as Haus

21:26 / 20.06.03

I think we should just lock this thread. It'd be butter that way.