CCP Falcon wrote:
These threads have been permitted to stay due to the fact that so many of them sprung up after the Incarna launch. We felt it better that we had a centralized place for each of these topics rather than 500 separate threads on the same thing. As such we selected the most popular of each of them and allowed them to remain, then closed the surplus threads.
Really, it's not rocket science that this is what happened and is blatantly obvious to anyone that this is why these threads remain open.
The fact of the matter is that you can try and push on technicalities and grey areas all day. In the end, these threads are there to assist us in keeping the subjects contained into single threads, and the ISD team with their moderation duties. These threads are moderated just the same as any other thread on the forums, and if you have an issue with a post that's made in them you can use the report button and it'll be reviewed.
The problem that I have with those threads is that they constantly take up space on the front page of GD. Its just clutter, and removing clutter is the entire purpose of locking duplicate threads. Just because there may have been 15 of them before, reducing the number to 5 doesn't make the remainder any less 'duplicate'.
Don't muddy the waters here - this is not a 'grey area' or 'technicality.'
"Like and get Likes' is even worse, its simply a thread about itself. Hundreds of pages of 'no EVE content'. And threads 'with no EVE content' are locked in every other case I've ever seen.
If the threads were actually EVE related, I'd not have a problem but even a cursory glance at them indicates they are just chatrooms for a small group of serial posters. There is a forum for this kind of thing - its called OOPE.
If I could hide threads, I'd be happy. But that is not possible.
If rules weren't quite so strictly enforced, I could let it slide.
But today, they are....so at least enforce them uniformly.
Those threads are obnoxious to a hell of a lot of forum posters.
So get on with it and enforce your own rules - or remove the rule entirely and let others **** up the forum with nonsense posts.
Solutions in order of preference:
A) Lock the threads.
B) Lock the redundant threads, and keep "Rate this Avatar", move "Like and get Likes" to OOPE.
C) Move all of them to OOPE (but prepare from complaints from OOPE residents, because they understand that these threads are simply eyesores, and they hate being dumping grounds for crap threads.)