[deanhills]

Apologies in advance for this rant. 

How many times have it happened to me in the last two years both at freevps.us (worst lock prone Forum ever) and now at post4vps too where threads are locked within a few hours of opening them - making me feel like a guest instead of a fully participating member of the forum.  Like please only lock threads when they really have expired.  If you're worried about spam, rather delete the post that you see as spam, than locking the thread as a defense tool against spam as that is defeating the objective of the forum from a discussion point of view.

An exception of course is the support section of the Forum.  Once the support request has been solved, it should be locked and marked as [SOLVED] - like this is one section of the Forum of which the topics can and should be locked when they have been solved.  They should also be locked when there hasn't been a timeous response from the author within X time frame. 

The need for keeping threads open is the most in the feedback forum, where members are asked for their feedback, there should be at least a minimum time period before a thread is allowed to be locked so as to allow all members to provide their feedback.  A suggestion is 36 hours but it could be longer depending on the suggestion.

By locking discussion threads prematurely you're shutting out (locking out) members who haven't been able to respond during that short window of time while the thread was open - and that is really unfair to them.  Please give all members equally at least 36 hours to respond to feedback requests. 

Preferably however locking should be a rare event and only happen when pressed to do so.  Like when in doubt, keep it unlocked.  Let the threads expire in their own time without locking them and if someone makes a necro post, delete the necro post.  What is the worst that can happen?  A few spam posts.  Like how difficult is it to delete spam posts?

Thanks.

[tryp4vps]

..... What is the worst that can happen?  A few spam posts.  Like how difficult is it to delete spam posts?

Thanks.

Possible reason:

Not too far ago some members said they hate their posts getting deleted. They felt that it is a kind of disrespect if admins consider their posts as spam and delete them.

I am not going to say that I completely agree with what admins are doing. But, locking threads is indeed more simple as it only requires hitting a single button.

Believe it or not, deleting posts require a lot more workloads and decision-making processes. Not to mention admins need to spend time reading a number of junk posts first before they take any action.

[Littlemaster]

I think this is about getting time to express concerns over some topic, I do not see much locked threads now, between locking threads may be based on the request of the author or in case of bumping old threads. If the topic is relevant then the thread should be only closed after the solution. The time limit may be irrelevant in this matter.