Believe it or not, the Lock function is used sparingly. I personally use it , as in the case of last nights threads that Tony locked, to stop further discussion when the owner and mods are discussing something that may or not be allowed. In addition, if people are stirred up, rude and insulting to others, the best method is to stop it from escalating. Some call it stifling free speech, I call it putting out brush fires before they spread. Once a subject passes a certain point and descends into argument and ill feelings, it serves no further purpose of support, education or carrying a point forward. Also, there's a point when a certain subject has been discussed to death and nothing new is being learned, sorta just burning up server space and bandwidth, with nothing not value being added. As a point of info, on some of the HW Forums, any thread over 4 pages long is locked, so we do let it flow much more here.
Also, our paychecks contains all zero's....
