Last week moderators had to close the Brexit thread.

A thread running for 5 years in non-av.
Submitted to a lot of tensions, emotions and strong opinions: Through so much milestones and high and low times, the thread posters managed to deliver a healthy number of pertinent analysis. A great thread.

The explanation by the mods for such a move is carefully worded. And clear, thanks for that.

After much discussion amongst the moderators we have decided to close and lock this thread. Unfortunately there has been way too much we have had to intervene in with users continually being disrespectful to one another, the repetitive flamebait, low quality posts, some trolling others. Despite handing out plenty or warnings and bans it hasnt improved and over the pass 3 days an excessive amount of posts have had to be removed, to the point where more posts have been removed from this thread than the rest of the site combined for the same time.

I fully understand this position, but would like to challenge it a bit. We're more or less invited to do so after all 10 days is very much later stage at Brexit scale !

There will be no more Brexit threads, we may revisit that at a later stage but for now there is to be no Brexit XII and so on.

Seriously, I was a resident lector of this thread and didn't notice more disappeared posts than before. I was really surprised by the decision.
Plenty of warning and bans you say, but even with a thread ecosystem very stable I didn't notice any. And no poster ever complained having missed to comment on some deadline due to a ban.

I understand that can't be the same in all thread, but for one having the volume and history of the brexit thread it may be interesting to explore other form of moderation, or at least communicate a bit more before going for a complete lock ? Something a bit more tailor made ?

Like giving the warning in public ? "User XXXX and YYYY, we've deleted your x lasts posts. Slow down or you'll receive a ban,"
And later the sanction ? "User YYYY have been banned for y days."

There's no miracle recipe of course, but for sure I find the lock of this thread exagerated even if I recognise I must have my fair part of deleted posts!

In any case I would really like to see the thread reopen, I think we all got the message now

Would really appreciate if others resident of the thread and mods give their feeling about the closure.

Unfortunately its not the first time we have had to lock down certain topics for a period of time. I think we went almost 2 years without a DTW related thread in civil aviation.

I do think the Brexit topic, while important does need a "cooling off" period, and Unfortunately there isn't a magic timeline that we can give on when the decision will be revisited.

tys777 wrote:

Unfortunately its not the first time we have had to lock down certain topics for a period of time. I think we went almost 2 years without a DTW related thread in civil aviation.

What was so controversial about DTW?

...do I even want to know?

Newark727 wrote:

tys777 wrote:

Unfortunately its not the first time we have had to lock down certain topics for a period of time. I think we went almost 2 years without a DTW related thread in civil aviation.

What was so controversial about DTW?

...do I even want to know?

No

Same sorts of issues. Very passionate users, too many personal attacks, too much off topic flamebait. It's extremely unusual that we throw a blanket ban on certain topics, so when it does happen, it means we've reached a point that we feel the discussion is no longer tenable. It's requiring too much of our time and effort at the detriment of other discussions. It isn't that the Brexit thread won't eventually be back — the Detroit thread made a return — but it may be a while. Sometimes we just need users to chill out on some topics and restore a little bit of sanity.

tys777 wrote:

Unfortunately its not the first time we have had to lock down certain topics for a period of time. I think we went almost 2 years without a DTW related thread in civil aviation.

I do think the Brexit topic, while important does need a "cooling off" period, and Unfortunately there isn't a magic timeline that we can give on when the decision will be revisited.

I agree on the "cooling off" need.
I won't agree for the length of it, But that's your call anyway

atcsundevil wrote:

Very passionate users, too many personal attacks, too much off topic flamebait. It's extremely unusual that we throw a blanket ban on certain topics, so when it does happen, it means we've reached a point that we feel the discussion is no longer tenable. It's requiring too much of our time and effort at the detriment of other discussions. It isn't that the Brexit thread won't eventually be back — the Detroit thread made a return — but it may be a while. Sometimes we just need users to chill out on some topics and restore a little bit of sanity.

Allright, it's fair. thanks for the mod viewpoint.

However I still feel it could be managed more efficiently earlier having to issue a topic ban !

As a simple user : In the thread I noticed too a recent increase of, to use your word : passion. I would say that's rather normal given the milestone reached by the topic !
Maybe thanks to the mods team work I didn't see the offensive post, and it surprises me to see the post locked when I didn't felt it reached inaceptable points.

Idealy, at least for "heavy topic" I would like the mods team to be a bit more active in the thread. If not to participate in the discussion itself, at least to remind the rules, express mod team opinion and adress public coments to posters.

Edit : 500 posts

Grizzly410 wrote:

Idealy, at least for "heavy topic" I would like the mods team to be a bit more active in the thread. If not to participate in the discussion itself, at least to remind the rules, express mod team opinion and adress public coments to posters.

Here's the thing though.. This is an aviation forum. Our priorities will always first and foremost be to the aviation discussions. Moderating Non Av is our lowest priority, which is what makes extremely time-consuming threads in that forum particularly frustrating for us — we would rather direct our efforts elsewhere. We'll still try to have a presence in those threads to calm things down, but it's unlikely that we'll be as visible as we would be in a troublesome aviation thread.