Why are topics in General being closed without explanation?

I always appreciated the possibility to civilly discuss political topics on LQ.
I could understand if the team would not want to allow that anymore, but simply closing an ongoing discussion about an important topic without any explanation whatsoever is much worse, from where I stand.
It leaves participants wondering for the reason and open to unpleasant interpretations of such drastic action, to put it mildly.

The topic I refer to is War in Ukraine.
I see nothing that warrants closing the thread, esp. since I can see other topics under General that have much more heated/controversial exchange in them, and remain open.
The thread was closed on Wed, I asked what for and received no answer.

For me it is quite obvious. I don't want to talk about wars, porn, religion and other things here, at LQ. You can probably open a thread somewhere else and invite people to discuss whatever you want or are interested in.
From the other side (mods' view?) this thread will sooner or later become unmanageable, so it is better to just avoid that.

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I remind myself that this is at the top of the home page:

There was a post there just before it got closed, that now seems to be deleted (it was basically Neo-Nazi stuff with a thin veil of not-really-plausible deniability). Which I guess could be why the thread was closed. That seems to be the general pattern: political thread attracts a high enough level of fringe, outside-the-Overton-window type posts and then gets closed.

It's kind of too bad that the extremists can effectively close down discussions between reasonable people, but the alternative probably involves a lot more unpaid labour on part of the volunteer moderators, so I totally get why that doesn't happen.

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I can't remember how many years I've blocked general because of the mindless drivel. Each to their own.

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People who ignore General are welcome to continue doing so - posting in this thread to say that they do so is off-topic noise.

The LQ Rules state that General is available for those who want to discuss non-technical topics, and that posts within should remain respectful.

Almost everyone who chooses to participate does try to adhere by that, so it would be nice to have a brief explanation when threads are closed.

Such an explanation does not need to be detailed, just enough so that people who try to remain civil receive feedback on whether they might need make adjustments, or (as appears to be the case in the example provided) that it was in response to a single disruptive user.

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While I remain a _huge_ free speech proponent, I've made clear that some of the discourse in General is not acceptable and will not be tolerated. In the thread you linked a number of posts were wildly inappropriate and the thread did not look salvageable. I'm hoping to avoid a growing list of topics not allowed, but at the current trajectory that or the closure of General remain possible. In the end, LQ's main goal is to foster friendly and welcoming discussion around Linux and open source.

--jeremy

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I believe that the executive, editorial, and moderator decisions being made by the owners are appropriate and level-handed. (Thank you.)

No – in eighteen years I have not agreed with all of them.

In this way, LQ continues to be "where Linux users come for help" (and get it), while at the same time supporting a (by now, rather Internet-historic ...) "mega-thread" with well more than 10,000 mostly-very-civil posts. (Please do not ever shut down "General." It has a place.)

I once hosted a "forum" on my company web site because at the time I thought I needed to do so. I very quickly removed it (after privately consulting with my key customers to be sure), because I realized that I was wasting my time being a moderator over exchanges that weren't making me money. And that really weren't of any concern to those who were making me money! This experience gave me huge respect for the entirely thankless role of "moderators." As well as the determination to never again be one.

The "perceived quality of" an Internet forum web site is extremely determined by the quality of their moderation team, and by the policies which guide their daily actions. (To put it another way: "the site will go to hell without them, and it won't take long to do it!")

The number-one objective for this site is the one that it has now fulfilled for many years: to be (possibly) the best place on the Internet where Linux users can come to ask their questions and to very quickly find their answers ... without feeling wounded by the experience, as very often happens elsewhere.

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I maintain that the discussion was friendly and welcoming (well that's debatable, but 99% of all threads on LQ, in and out of General, are like that - let's say "civilised" instead).

I did not know there was one extremely offensive post there.
But again, wouldn't it have been prudent to either remove that post only, or at least give an explanation for closing the thread? As it stands, we don't know who closed it or why. The moderators of General have not even logged in this year. How can we discuss even more civilised if nobody tells us?
Also, it's not like all political discussions are being closed, there are some right now in General, and the occasional political drift in almost all other sections.
Considering the War in Ukraine thread was civilised enough, why is it being closed without any explanation while another one remains open?
That paints a really bleak picture. It leaves people like me and others that participated willingly in a controversial but civilised discussion (nobody's forced to do that!), wide open to suspicion that maybe there might have been some other motive for - again - closing one thread at that specific point and leaving another open.

That's why I say, please:
Either forbid political discussion completely, or allow it, and close such threads only for the same reasons you'd close any other thread.
You can't have it both ways - well obviously you can, but I think it's wrong.

Oh and in case there really were "a number of posts", so not just that one troll, and in case one of the posts was by me, I would appreciate if jeremy or whoever closed the thread would tell me so. I mean that sincerely, I think that would be much better than groping in the dark like I'm now forced to do: I have a small suspicion that one of my posts could have appeared very offensive to someone who read it only diagonally, thinking it's a personal attack on another LQ member, when in reality it's a movie review, and I'm criticising the producer.

Isn't the whole point of this thread that off-topic noise is not only acceptable, but to be encouraged ?.

I fully agree with boughtonp's post #6, all of it.
Saying "I don't like General" is kinda pointless. We have a "General" subforum, and it is being used.

Maybe I should say about (some other) subforum that I don't appreciate their "mindless drivel"? No, I'm not doing that. I just don't go there.

It is as I feared.

Nobody came forward to own up to closing my Ukraine thread.
It remains closed.
Nobody explained anything.
Jeremy's answer is just a standard cookie-cutter reply that gives away nothing.
Tolerating partisan decisions, seems to be the only explanation.
Instead we now have a topic that doesn't clearly and unambiguously call a war a war, discussing (mostly US American) youtube videos.
People are clearly wary of actually discussing current events.
To anybody who is familiar with the Russian-Ukrainian situation, this sounds unpleasantly familiar.
There was a person from Kyiv participating in my thread. How do they feel about this, you think?

Shame on you, LQ.

I don't think so. And I don't really understand why do you insist on discussing it here (at LQ).

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You don't post much in Non-*NIX/General - not at all this year.
So it's not surprising that you aren't touched by this.
But we do have a General, and political topics are not banned. Personally I think they're important and I enjoy them - and I say it again: this particular one was civilised.

Make no mistake, I'm not the only one who feels bad about this. I'm just the only one who comes out to talk about it, nag about it, and won't take variations of silence for an answer.
Compliance is always easy, disagreement is always difficult.

To put it in a simple slogan: No political topics at all would be better than this vague sometimes yes, sometimes no.

PSA: here's a site dedicated to politics.