Shot down

or Welcome to the New Wild West

I haven't a thing against chess.com locking threads. I even have a history of having had my own threads locked, starting with this one @Erik locked in April, 2008.  In fact I think more threads should be locked --  for real reasons (I have this obviously absurd notion that I can't shake of this being a chess site). 

But sometimes it's interesting to explore the reasons and purposes behind a thread being locked -- something that may in itself become victim of the Lock -- to understand how things work.

I was slightly involved in and following a thread that was locked explicitly for not following the ToS:

(clicking image takes you to the thread)

Having read every one of the 274 comments, I'm having trouble figuring out which Terms of Service were broken.  There was a debate, of course but not an argument.  There were a few silly postings but the entire thread pretty much stayed on topic. As best I remember, there was even only one stupid worn-out meme.  There was no name-calling, no bad language, no spamming.  Even people who disagreed were for the most part respectful, outside of a few little jabs here and there.  The discussion topic (discussing it, not practicing it) isn't in any way disallowed by the ToS.  

As stated, I have absolutely no problem with a thread being locked for whatever reasons it's deemed necessary.  I'm just curious about the proffered reason which makes no sense to me.  

What should the commenters have done differently?  What should we have learned from this?

Was the thread shot down on the street in a fair fight  or was it an innocent bystander?

Welcome to the New West.

I'm thankful when I don't get enmeshed in the French. 

Hey! It was a worn-out meme but not stupid. 

All memes by nature are stupid (to me). 

I see that @MGleason has now added some comments of his own to that locked thread. I think, he maybe came across this thread and added them later for clarification. He still didn't clarify why the thread was locked, but at least he has answered all of OP's questions.

I never read anything supporting racism, just different ideas of what constitutes racism. But either way opinions aren't governed by the ToS. 

Wow. That thread from the get-go attracted the worst commenters, the dude with the glasses trying to look cool about casual racism, that other guy saying genetics is their cause of racism so they're been "involuntarily racists" lol. If anything, that thread totally deserved the lock.

I see. Here I was admiring you and hoping to be in good terms. Of course, it doesn’t mean the admiration will stop, but it seems like we are the opposite sort of people. 

Yep, it's a chess site. Would be nice if posters and moderators remembered that instead of looking to be offended, even if it means inventing a cause of offence. Let posters moderate their own posts, and hold them responsible for that👍

👍

I'm happy with agreeing to disagree. Differences are the spice of life. 

I reread the last page and the only thing I see is someone who claims he doesn't accept the accusations of racism at face value. That's not denial as far as I can tell. 

I don't know how it is now but when I was a moderator, Nazism / Hitlerism in any club, forum, profile, text or image would be shut down as quickly as possible. We would even actively search them out. Maybe things have changed. 

That thread probably got locked because some angry little people were bickering and it got tiresome.

Whether it did or didn't  deserve to be locked isn't the question. The question is whether it or comments too numerous to moderate broke the ToS. 

And the broke the ToS how?

Actually there's 10x more bickering in many other threads that don't get locked