Closing topics What's the real reason?

[snowball]

This is primarily directed at the web team.
What makes up the decision to close certain topics? Is it the reply volume? Is it the importance of the topic? There were a few that I would have liked to respond to because I like a good debate but they had been mysteriously closed to response. I'm not angry, but at a time like this, the feelings
expressed by the people on this forum should not be held back. There are a lot of frustrated,angry,hurt Firefighters out there
who want nothing more than to be able to vent a little. Closing a thread will only cause the affected to "Bottle up thier feelings" and we all know how good that is for us.
It seems that the only threads that are being locked are the ones that get a little steamy.
Please let these people vent. There's nothing worse than not being able to speak your mind.
Are there other areas of your website that could "temporarily" be closed tomake room for
the traffic on the forums?
Just my opinion. null

[webteam]

Due to the sheer number of threads, its impossible to read them all. But when specific issues are brought to our attention, we react as quickly as possible. If there is even a hint of users bashing others, or anything as such, we close the thread and allow people to cool off and move on.

As far as other areas of the site that could be closed, most of the forums have returned and the rest will in the coming weeks. Unlike straight HTML pages, the forums are an application which soaks up a lot of bandwidth and server load when it has hundreds and sometimes thousands of people on it at once.

There were times since the 9-11 Tragedy that our traffic has approached 20x an average day, and some 50x the average load specifically in the forums.

Thanks for your support
WebTeam