When a poster starts a new thread and where there may already have been existing threads on a subject – they risk being judged by our anonymous volunteer fellow posters of needless duplication. The thread creation screen does rather suggest that re-opening any existing thread on the subject is the preferred one.

But if you then re-open older threads on this subject – you risk being judged by our anonymous volunteer fellow posters as 'flooding' our forum with old threads. This is assuming that you can refresh them and these threads have not been the subject of enforced or automatic closure – a fact that will usually not be established until the poster has scrolled all the way down to the submit box.

The result of either judgement by our (undoubtably well-intentioned) anonymous volunteer fellow posters is the same rather unfriendly approach – imposed editing action – without the poster's advanced knowledge or agreement. There is a risk of being damned - either way.

Many new posters who are not hardened to the skewed alternative reality that our forum now appears to be subject to - may decide that the safe course for them - and the only one certain not to result in them receiving accusations like them wasting precious bandwidth or being subject to many other personal judgements - is for them to decide not to post at all.

It would appear that the starting of new threads is not now the preferred option and the re-opening of older threads appears now to be the preferred one. In order to make this clear to our forum and encourage a consistent approach – perhaps it would be a good idea to ensure that all threads can remain open for new contributions - especially as our forum is now informed that the closing of threads presents no technical advantage to the efficient running of the site?