I'm gonna stop here and make a point about this statement, using a rule related to my dayjob.
When something becomes toxic, it needs to be removed. At my office, and in my steel shop, you can be sent home without pay for a bad attitude, because some negativity is toxic. I've been sent home myself for arriving with a toxic attitude once, and I'm part owner of the company. Having been on the causing end, and seeing it retroactively through the eyes of someone who was dissenting, sending home people, or locking certain threads, for becoming toxic makes perfect sense.
Luckily, we actually hand out punishments individually, and locking a thread is not a punishment.
I'm just gonna assume this is a bit of Jokucing around, smile, chuckle, and move on.
But we do treat the DP like that. When the people without cannot maintain an actual debate without derailing or starting a flame war, and we modpost time and time again to stay on track or knock it off, we eventually shut it down. I've seen a thread open back up with a modpost, and the first several posts immediately start swearing and slinging insults at each other. And it isn't even always the same people who made a modpost necessary in the first place.
Agreed, but negative, and toxic/abusive are not the same. It's possible to discuss the positive and negative sides of an issue without interactions that get threads locked, otherwise the entire DP forum would be locked, surely.
To quote Yellow Diamond on this one:
I refer you to my quote of Yellow Diamond, just above this.
Again, among the reasons for locking it, it was increasingly abusive rather than a discussion.
I suppose that would depend on how many times we have to lock the thread to do that. And how far back it spans. How many times should we lock the thread for cleaning, and go through hundreds of pages to make sure we got everything, and unlock the clean thread, only to have another hundred pages that require us to lock and clean it over again? There comes a time where cleaning a thread is not the most plausible course of action, especially when the thread is repeating the same negative and abusive trends several times.
Wonderfully put.
Overall, this thread has moved on from what it was. I will be locking it, because the initial purpose of thanking the staff was met, and then the thread moved off track to become the back and forth discussion it presently is.
As King said, if you wish to further discuss this, you are very welcome to open a topic specific to that purpose.
And again, Emiko Gale, thank you for the compliment. As you can see, much of the staff popped in to see it first hand. We really do appreciate it.