I'm curious how quickly threads get locked down once a moderator steps in. For a thread I started, the mod issued the first warning at 8:35am and the thread got locked at 1:10pm--a little more than four hours. I can't blame the mod because there were a lot of misbehaving folks that I'd rather not have had in the thread.

As a follow-up question, has a thread ever not been locked after a mod finds it necessary to step in? My bet is that this has never happened. So, why bother threatening to lock the thread? Just do it and eliminate the last round of insults. It'll irritate the snipers sitting on the sidelines waiting to sneak in the last word.

I have two suggestions to minimize these problems:

1. Give mods a means to block troublemakers from posting additional comments on a thread where they are misbehaving. They can post in other threads, but not the one they're blocked out of. All moderators need is a link at the bottom of a post (where it says [quote] [print] [save]) for [block]. "Block" removes the comment and stops that poster from making any further comments in the thread. Maybe there needs to be a check box to indicate why the block is occurring for bad behavior or off-topic. I don't think a reason is needed. Most people will figure out why they got blocked from a thread.

2. Give the thread starter that capability and save the moderators some time. After all, why should the person who started the thread have to see it shut down before getting all the answers just because some kids can't play nice together? The person that starts a thread is going to monitor it more closely than moderators.

The current system only encourages bad behavior once a moderator steps in. The volume of inappropriate comments spiked after that point. Some people have obsessive compulsive behavior and can't seem to avoid reading threads that irritate them and all they want is for those threads to go away so that they don't have to look at them anymore. Since the thread is going to get banned anyway, why not get some last nasty comments in before the thread gets locked--and speed up the process at the same time.

This allows threads, that ought not be terribly controversial, be discussed sanely by sane people instead of being hijacked by individuals who are way too emotionally involved in something that shouldn't have that kind of emotional attachment.

I've never liked punishments that get applied to everybody. Punishing good and bad people equally doesn’t dissuade bad behavior or sponsor good behavior. In practice, it mostly rewards bad behavior by getting threads locked--which is often the goal. For some people, it's almost a game of seeing how much they can get away with. Since it's not their thread, they're often not even vested in what happens to the thread. What's the upside to the posters that weren't causing trouble in the thread? The overall effect makes forums less friendly.

Personally, I like option 2. I doubt mods want the extra work of option 1. Moderators still have the power to overrule anything the thread starter does including blocking an overly abusive thread starter or locking the thread starter out of their own thread. All other forum rules still apply, so the usual list of forbidden controversial topics still hold.

My visual indexes of Poser content are at http://www.sharecg.com/pf/rgagnon