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Let me open with this: If this gets taken down, I told you so.

Mods, I see a lot of posts locked with a brief mention on how we like to avoid rant posts, which I agree with (ignoring my current actions )
But you never seem to lock the posts ranting about GW or other game producers. So I ask: why don't you lock the "X company sucks" posts as well?

Moving to Nuts & Bolts as it is probably a more appropriate place for this discussion...

sorry about that, thanks

As I was told by a mod, the criteria for locking a post when it's of a personal nature is nuanced, but one of the thoughts is, is it something that is likely to spur discussion?

Complaining about a game that statistically, many of the people on this forum previously have or currently do play is likely to spur a discussion from either side of the argument. On the other hand, a rant about how "I'm not happy my wife bought the wrong kind of bread from the store" is unlikely to have wide appeal and thus, not likely to spark useful discussion.

There's that, and then there's the whole overall 'theme', I guess?

Threads that are critical of a company, or trend that way, are certainly OK.

Threads that complain about people complaining?

Not so much.

If I'm guessing correctly, the thread in question that brought this point up now is probably this one:

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/620777.page

Now, this is not meant in any way to single anyone out, but it is a good example of the kind of thread that won't go anywhere good, and it certainly will almost immediately become a flame war.

It is basically a rant thread, a complaining about complainers thread and it starts out insulting a certain group of users.

These types of threads are probably best kept on user's personal blog sites, but here on a discussion forum, they won't usually actually encourage discussion - instead, just insults and arguments/shouting matches.

Yeah I hadn't seen that one. A thread premised on the "fact" that most people who quit are made of fail, heh.

A "fact" that apparently is taken out of the user's imagination.

If people are going to cast aspersions at least they might base them on some kind of evidence beyond 'I think...'

It was this thread that came to my mind.

At its core it's a fair question to ask. "There's a local guy that won't behave. Any advice on how I can approach him or deal with him?". But opening the thread saying he want to "physically beat him to death" (which seems to have been edited out now) is hardly encouriging civil responses.

I think one of the previous responses in determining if a "rant" thread gets locked was this:

Does the rant have the purpose or likelihood to actually generate discussion: probably okay.
Are you ranting just to rant: lock.