Flame Warriors ~ View topic - Lock-the-topic Guy

Clueless Newb Joined: 12 Sep 2007 Posts: 21

As internet debate forums switch away from newsgroups and usenet to forums, the changing interface begets new warrior types. Somewhere along the lines, forums in which administrators and moderators could close down problematic topics by force by "locking" them became prevalent.

Lock-the-topic Guy comes in two flavors, benign and malignant. The benign version is usually not an active warrior, and more along the lines of a bystander. Yet for reasons only beknownst to him/her, when a topic becomes heated, this person will run to the nearest Nanny or Admin and request for them to lock it down. How well this works depends on the forum and the staff there. This version of Lock-the-topic Guy is basically the internet's version of a school hallway snitch.

The malignant version, however, tries to use thread locks to win the topic. Often employed by a weaker warrior who can't bring himself to admit defeat, such as Ego or Palooka, they will begin demanding in the topic itself that the forum staff come by to close it down. Of course, they will try to spin these requests to make it look as though by getting it locked, they would win the battle (e.g. "Close this thread, I declare it crap"). If the Lock-the-topic Guy happens to be someone with moderator powers on the forum, it isn't unheard of for them to post a rant and then lock the topic as a way of ensuring that they get the last word.

This description made me laugh as I can recall a few warriors of either types.

I like the way you've summed it up.

The first benign type is often viewed as a wannabe Nanny, or a straight out snitch, but it depends a lot on their wider activities. But a few don't seem to do anything more than to run to the Nanny or Admin to tittle-tat.

The second type, from what I've seen, really believe they've got the argument won, if only everyone would stop replying and beating them down. They are a weak warrior, generally with a firm grip on the wrong end of the stick. They probably spent a while "perceived by the majority" as a Ferrous Cranus, until they found the Admin or Nanny was secretly "on their side."

One of the more memorable places I've been around this type of activity was at a HONEYPOT, and the Admin was really "on their side." There wasn't any conclusive proof of it being a honeypot, but, slowly the "Troll Patrol" were specifically targeted by the Admin's new rules, to counter attacks against the Dude's "lock the topic" angry socks did what ever pretty much they could get away with.

Edit to clarify a little

Edit jan2013 9th.

Just an update on the site I was referring too. The admin purged pretty much everything the Troll Patrol did back in 2011, and it should have been obvious what the site was. It limped along, changed format from phpbb to vanilla and it looked like the site was getting up once again, the admin even seemed to be "fightin' for the consumer" but I see it moved to be hosted by amazonnews domain by November 2012, and not his own. Possibly it was earlier. The admin had purchased a heap of domains, most to refer to his main site, a couple for other purposes.

Snicker. Maybe he was bought out?

The site as far as I can tell is now non existent.
_________________
The important thing is knowing who owns the fence