Do you not think that zultar gave a full enough explanation of his decision?

"This thread is ridiculous.

"We are not going to have threads where you call out people to be killed. I don't particularly care for the "philosophical" bend to justify this kind of "discussion."

"This is a gaming site, and the forum should not take up all the moderators' time. We should not have to draw specific exact rules of what is allowed and what isn't, so a few of you can say whatever you want because you think it is your right to say whatever you want on a private site and ruin the game for a lot of people.

"It is not reasonable. I am locking this thread. Be reasonable in what you post."

...thus spake Zultar

No, I don't. If I did, I wouldn't have asked.

Zultar was personally offended I guess. To say that I threatened to kill someone is a gross misinterpretation as PE/2WL noted.

Agreed.

It seems crystal clear to me. Obviously I am not a moderator, but as I see it:

1. The nature of the thread was highly objectionable, and the OP called out another user, which is something forum users have been told not to do on more than one past occasion.

2. Users were PM-ing mods and emailing the mod account to complain about the thread. As Zultar says, this was creating hassle for the moderators responding to the complaints and, initially, having to have arguments with users about why they were *not* locking the thread (see President Eden's comments earlier on in that thread). Zultar, as co-owner, decided to put an end to this hassle by locking the thread.

To the point of users emailing the mods, I don't see taking shortcuts as being the proper way to conduct any type of community business. I don't feel aggrieved by having the thread locked, but my intuitive guess is that zultar got a few PMs, read the opening post(s) and closed it without really taking the thread as a whole (it was a meaningful discussion, I learned something, and some of the replies were very thoughtful.)

It's not the end of the world and zultar does have the right to do whatever he wants.

I don't know what you mean by "taking shortcuts".

If the mod account is receiving a lot of email traffic about your stupid thread, that will unavoidably get in the way of the mods being able to deal with emails about multis, cheating, and other problems in games, which is the main thing the mod email account is supposed to be for.

Taking shortcuts is appeasing people so they shut up, instead of following the proper procedures. Kind of like populist politics.
I mean, if we all complain about Putin and he's silenced just to stop the PMs, that wouldn't be right either.

Jamiet,

Well, you go to exactly the kind of reason I'm asking. If the mods are now going to lock any thread if enough people complain about it to be a "hassle," that would be a major policy change, and we should all know, both so that we can avoid posting threads that may cause offense, and so that we can complain about threads that we would like to have locked. In the past, there has been a presumption on webdip that a thread would *not* be locked without very good reason, and since several mods are active on the forum (and were active on the thread), the probability that making a judgement call was creating a lot of extra work seems pretty slim to me.

So these are just the kind of things I would like to hear more about.

Semck - No, tye mods won't, but zultar is co owner. He could ban any one of us and there is no appeal. He can do whatever he likes as co owner.

@ SYnapse: "Taking shortcuts is appeasing people so they shut up, instead of following the proper procedures."

Zultar is co-owner of the site. People emailed with formal complaints and he responded by locking your thread. That is the proper procedure. End.

This is really simple, even when abge was in charge of the forum he did not allow threads specifically calling out other members. A thread that begins by saying that we should consider imprisoning and killing people like a specific member is so clearly out of line that I'm fairly concerned that it seems multiple people don't understand why it's inappropriate.

"my intuitive guess is that zultar got a few PMs, read the opening post(s) and closed it without really taking the thread as a whole (it was a meaningful discussion, I learned something, and some of the replies were very thoughtful.)"

This is wrong btw, he, myself, and 2 other mods where in a gchat conversation reviewing Zultar's post per his request. I can affirm that he'd read the entire thing and was well aware of what was said inside it. This is similar to sexual based conversations. While explicitly detailed posts are allowed on the forum it isn't allowed in the OP, from when Kestas and abge made a decision on that issue. If you want to have a serious conversation about a topic then you need to do so in a way that doesn't leave members thinking that you might seriously kill another member if the opportunity arose. That never has, and never will be acceptable, as our members are here to play diplomacy, not to worry that someone they meet here would seriously consider doing them harm if the opportunity arose.

Thank you, jmo. I can't even begin to agree that any reasonable reader could see SYnapse's post as suggesting that he might seriously kill obi if the opportunity arose, but I appreciate your taking the time to respond to my concern.

@Draug,

I understand that zultar can do whatever he wants as co-owner. If you reread my post, you'll see that I was asking why he did this, not whether he had the legal right.

"A thread that begins by saying that we should consider imprisoning and killing people like a specific member is so clearly out of line that I'm fairly concerned that it seems multiple people don't understand why it's inappropriate."

I agree, except this wasn't my post. I asked the question of why society tolerates people (like obiwan), it wasn't a call to consider imprisoning and killing them. This is why I think you read a "gist" of the thread rather than the specifics

"This is wrong btw, he, myself, and 2 other mods where in a gchat conversation reviewing Zultar's post per his request"

This is interesting and informative though, and instills some confidence in the decisions you make. I wonder why it couldn't be more explicit the processes which you do go through sometimes.