LOL ! I guess that in an ideal world we'd know that a topic had run it's course simply by the fact that there were no more posts on it

Some topics are almost always inflamatory though (and threads involving BV, FT, and some other notable people always seem to meet that criteria more frequently than the average), such that mod's may need to balance the "value" of the thread continuing vs it being halted. The members don't like to be censored and told that they can't discuss topic X, yet they may also get upset if anything they see as 'bashing' continues too long - and finding the balance that keeps the members happy (and therefore RCU busy & profitable enough to stay open) can be tough at times.

Jim is pretty new to the mod job and almost immediately finds himself with a potentially nuclear topic being discussed, so I think it would be helpful if we'd give him some leeway and benefit of the doubt while he gets used to those new spurs he's strapped on.

Besides, it's a historial fact on RCU that whenever the membership decides that it wasn't finished with a topic whose thread got closed, they have a habit of opening up new threads to continue the discussion in a way that hopefully doesn't make the mod's feel the ned to close it. In that we we tend to reach some kind of implicit compromise between the mod's and the memers on topics that are 'hot buttons'.

Gordon