A loooong reply..
Y'know...I remember this happening back in the day when trance was still cool.
Seriously, this thing does come up every now and then...if I could be arsed searching for it, there's a thread I started ages ago about pretty much the same thing when I was
deeply concerned that we didn't have the right balance between serious and novelty (for want of a better term) threads in here.
If this sheds some light on things...I don't close things just because they're light-hearted. I close them because they don't leave any room for discussion or contribution. Talking about the things you love or ranting about the things you hate...these are topics that we can all relate to, and personally I'm kind of interested to see what other bluelighters feel about the whole thing. By the same virtue, the pics thread doesn't really have any intelligence behind it but it is fun looking at photos of people, and it invites comments. On the other hand, posting that you've made x amount of posts or that Raz is on a closing spree--to pull a couple examples out of my arse...
..I don't really see how anyone gets to contribute to that in a sense that other people would give a fuck about.
Also, don't assume that a thread gets closed just because we as mods arbitrarily decide it's "not good enough". A couple of people have brought up BREAKaBEAT's punching in the face thread, and while I kind of cringed when I first saw it I was happy to leave it open initially because people were approaching it without too much seriousness for the most part. We did get complaints about it though, and acted accordingly. Sorry to the people who were getting into it, but part of the whole mod thing is making sure that
everyone feels comfortable being a part of this forum.
Finally...we're only human--statistically, there's always gonna be
someone who disagrees with a decision that any of the mods make. That's fine. If you honestly think a decision we've made was unfair, let us know. If you don't feel comfortable telling the person who did it, speak to one of the other mods. There are three of us, we all know what confidential means, and none of us bite. Well, I might, but that's probably more of a topic for SLR than it is here...
In closing (thank christ!), I'd much rather this kind of stuff gets discussed in its own thread as it has been here rather than hijacking existing threads...and really, do let the mods know if you think there are any real issues that need to be addressed.
You all rock,
Raz out.