Mike, the new Members Forum is a bit of an exception, for many reasons - such as they are new so the whole character of that board is different; and because they have to get 5 posts somehow to get out of the spam trap.
One thing you may have noticed here is we don't hammer people for going off-topic, as you might have expected if you consider this forum to be 'carefully moderated'. Many forums are much tighter than we are on this. In fact, it is mainly the members themselves who try to keep threads on topic.
But in the end, threads need to be in the right board, and sometimes they need to be closed. Different mods probably close threads for different reasons, as their jobs are different - for instance one Moderator might mainly work with the Classifieds, another in the Outside, another in Live Chat or reviews - and so on. They will all close threads for reasons specific to that section - so you need to consider where the threads are, as well.
Me, I close threads because I see backlinks turning up for them and they are RIP threads in my view. Software notifies me whenever a link to one of our threads appears out on the web, and sometimes these are really old threads someone has linked to. It might mean people are going to dive in there and restart them.
If it is older than 6 months* I generally close the thread, if it is still open (and especially if it started two or three years ago). That's because things change rapidly in our world and discussions initiated in 2008 (or even 2010) are often pointless now. I don't want that thread to come back to life - it's what we call a zombie thread, if it does: a long-dead one that is better off RIP. Old threads stop more relevant new ones with new views on the subject being started.
* That might mean started more than 6 months back, or with no activity for 6 months, depending.
Times change, new ideas are needed, the old stuff is classic but let's not go back there, it's been done. It's there for reference if you need it. A lot of old tech stuff here (tech, medical, legal, whatever) is either wrong now or well out of date. Anything really valuable is in a sticky or might be pulled out and put in the InfoPages at some stage.
For example people see an old thread about the FDA banning e-cigs and start to worry about it - but that's dead and gone. Old stuff sometimes needs locking or it can be taken out of context.
One thing you may have noticed here is we don't hammer people for going off-topic, as you might have expected if you consider this forum to be 'carefully moderated'. Many forums are much tighter than we are on this. In fact, it is mainly the members themselves who try to keep threads on topic.
But in the end, threads need to be in the right board, and sometimes they need to be closed. Different mods probably close threads for different reasons, as their jobs are different - for instance one Moderator might mainly work with the Classifieds, another in the Outside, another in Live Chat or reviews - and so on. They will all close threads for reasons specific to that section - so you need to consider where the threads are, as well.
Me, I close threads because I see backlinks turning up for them and they are RIP threads in my view. Software notifies me whenever a link to one of our threads appears out on the web, and sometimes these are really old threads someone has linked to. It might mean people are going to dive in there and restart them.
If it is older than 6 months* I generally close the thread, if it is still open (and especially if it started two or three years ago). That's because things change rapidly in our world and discussions initiated in 2008 (or even 2010) are often pointless now. I don't want that thread to come back to life - it's what we call a zombie thread, if it does: a long-dead one that is better off RIP. Old threads stop more relevant new ones with new views on the subject being started.
* That might mean started more than 6 months back, or with no activity for 6 months, depending.
Times change, new ideas are needed, the old stuff is classic but let's not go back there, it's been done. It's there for reference if you need it. A lot of old tech stuff here (tech, medical, legal, whatever) is either wrong now or well out of date. Anything really valuable is in a sticky or might be pulled out and put in the InfoPages at some stage.
For example people see an old thread about the FDA banning e-cigs and start to worry about it - but that's dead and gone. Old stuff sometimes needs locking or it can be taken out of context.
I was just looking out for our new members. It seems we're seeing more and more new members who are now posting saying "this is my first post, and I just wanted to say i bought XX device due to all the research I did here and it's working great!" which is awesome for them, meaning we're doing our job by getting all the best information out there that we can. 
