User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26285319-20170104192003/@comment-24894325-20170912142003

Let me explain. I joined this discussion at the end of January. It was open and, ceteris paribus, would stay open for the next 6 months. I do not think it makes sense to force editors to wait for so long until one discussion closes if they want to suggest a slightly different angle on the exact same topic. This would, in effect, be bordering on stifling free speech. But, were I to open another discussion on Rule 4 of T:VS then, at the end of January, we would have had two competing discussions regarding a phrase only two-sentence-long. I hope we can all agree that such parallel discussions are to be avoided at all costs.

My point is that an overly narrow treatment of the topic of a thread leads to situations when editors are not capable to express their concerns or can only do so to the detriment of the wiki. The titular topic was announced as "Authorial intent within T:VS (four little rules page)". And that is what I was discussing in this thread. If this thread is closed and a new one is opened, must we repeat all our arguments again? And would it help bring our positions closer together? My suspicion is that it could only help if some of us do not participate in the discussion. For instance, OS25 is currently not able to participate for objective reasons. Perhaps, opening a new discussion could succeed in reaching a consensus due to lack of his input. But it would really amount to ignoring the opinions he rightfully expressed here. IMHO, that would be bordering on foul play. While editors who do not participate in a discussion have no right to complain about its result, editors who do participate equally have the right to have their opinion heard and evaluated rather than zapped into oblivion for procedural reasons.

To be clear, I am not suggesting that this was in any way intended by the closure. In fact, I myself only now realised this implication. But I think it should be a reasonable rule of thread closure that nominal closures for the purpose of starting the discussion from a clean slate should not be performed if one of active participants of the original discussion is under a temporary block.