I'm curious what the mods feel the benefit of closing a thread is. If you outright delete the thread with a PM to the OP, then it's stricken from history, removed from the DB (to save space) and will not turn up in future searches for similar topics. By CLOSING the thread, it just takes the thread and makes it a sore thumb in the midst of archived threads.
Realistically, it's like conversation. How many times have you IT folk had the same conversation about how stupid users are. People who aren't in that situation might get sick of hearing that story over and over, but some of us LOVE telling it over and over to the same people, to different people. This is a community and the people are mostly thoughtful individuals. Many threads get self moderated by the community and pruned out due to lack of conversation. If someone wants to be supportive, wants to carry on that conversation again in a new thread (and by someone I mean people other than the OP) then it's akin to the host of the party coming over and saying, "Xeph, we've all heard that story... go check out the VHS library and watch it on that TV over there if you want to hear it again."
I think that totally off topic threads, threads where the OP is obviously trolling or attacking people personally, and other obviously disruptive threads should be moderated immediately. However, I don't feel that we're creating an open and creative environment by stifling potentially good conversation.
Again, I'm not trying to be the dissenter here, just adding my 2.5¢ for what I feel is the benefit of the community. Like my little tag says, "<3 TFP"
Also again, as noted above, if I've ever had a thread closed, I don't recall. I've had one moved, but that was semantics and I was cool with it. I've just seen more closed threads recently than I think I ever have before.
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