The suggestion that our forum be a place where all threads remain open to be refreshed by any poster - may seem totally idealistic to many posters - when it is of course nothing of the sort.

So routine has thread closure now become that it may be news to some posters that our forum managed perfectly well for many years without any threads being closed at all. It was only fairly recently that our 'moderators' were armed with this weapon.

I see that as a sad day for our forum. For now our 'moderators' scratch around to find an excuse to close a thread and encourage other posters to suggests candidates for closure - and give the impression that this has always been the case and that it achieves something.

The reason I refer to it as finding an excuse - is that although the act of imposing closure on threads has now become routine it makes no difference to the running of our forum nor improved the level of posting behaviour on our forum.

The hysteria now generated on our forum by the concept of imposing closure on threads has become nothing but a counter-productive distraction. an end in itself. Playing about with posters invited contributions now appears to have become a bit of a fun game for our 'moderators'.

Posters are now encouraged to take part in this game by finding threads to be closed - (along with other imposed actions on the post of others) - rather than be encouraged to simply concentrate on their own posting. It would be nice to see a return on our forum to where all threads remained open.