Posted By Descarte Being a forum admin and moderator of 2 sites myself with over 10,000 members, if you dont lock a thread how can you stop others adding their 2 cents and letting the topic continue to spiral either off topic or in a direction or subject. The other option is to remove topics completely, but locking is more user friendly and allows people to see both what was said and most often the reasons for it being locked.

Posted By Descarte Ah so your saying mods should prune out postings which stray off the topic instead of locking threads. Though time consuming this is possible and IS practiced hence the [this message cannot be displayed at thie time] messages. However I think that either when topics are full of off topic posts or those against forums rules not contributing to the topic or a safety related issue and that is it seen that the topic has run its course or does not seem to have any where constructive to go, then it should be locked.

Posted By SAF Have you looked in your box?

Posted By SAF You know, the one you were thinking outside of!