Locking threads for me is a rare occurence. I don't really feel the need to lock down the ability to post in a thread. If a thread has gone so far off the rails that it needs closing so no one else can reply, I have to question why it's been allowed to become so bad without it being dealt with sooner. Thankfully we have a rather good memberbase here at Admin Extra, and regardless of age, you all seem pretty adult in your dealings with each other, so threads being closed for that reason are few and far between. The only other reason I can perceive of for closing threads is when they're for specific information only and do not need replies. Why do you close/lock threads?
Leaving aside threads started by spammers threads are rarely closed on our forum. The last one was three months ago, we had a change of membership in our Euromillions syndicate and we needed to draw a line under the old membership and start afresh with the new.
When you have a busy site, threads can get out of hand within 10 minutes. I've seen over 2 pages worth of posts on my site in 10 minutes time. When you have a lot of forums and a lot of posts/threads to go through, there are ones that slip through the crack, super mods aren't online, or the moderator for that section isn't online at that time...so when we finally catch it, we close it and usually issue infractions. But it's our job to set the staff up so we have someone online 24/7 to try to take care of all these things asap...just sometimes it's not possible.
+1 I really dislike closing threads. On my board, we generally honor requests by the OP to close threads and that's the most common reason for closure. Other than OP requests, the only reason for closure is a thread where gentle direction by a moderator or regular member and warnings to behave have failed and it's turned into a 'chitfest' (as I like to call it).
I don't think I've had to close a thread in 4-5 years. I think the last time I closed a thread was down to the topic being a sticky closed topic to highlight the features used on my site and a how to use them type of thing.
I lock threads that are not meant to be replied to, Rules for example. And also threads that are in violation of rules.
