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Can someone tell me why this thread was locked? It was done so with no clear indication as to why it was being terminated. While I grant that the question was a silly one, it doesn't seem any dumber than the hundreds of "what would you put in book X?" thread floating around this site.

I exalt this thread, and* agree with Jimsolo.

I'm not trying to be an agitator, mind you. I'm bang alongside locking threads that violate rules, I just sometimes don't understand why it happens. Some mods post a reason the thread is being locked before they do so, some don't. I just wanted to know. (Y'know, so I don't get black-bagged by the mods for a crime I didn't know I was committing.)

It has a lot of the signs of being a troll or silly thread so may have been shut down for that reason.

Dakka not wanting to be associated with pirating GW intellectual material. Just saying.

You're likely not to get an answer to this question in this thread, it's simply going to be locked - if you read the rules, it clearly states who to contact if you have exactly the problem you have (at the bottom).

1) free GW anything is more of a dead horse than cheap frozen meals in Europe.
2) a community project to turn GW anything into a freely shared PDF anything is just showing shades of piracy.
3) as much as Yakface and Lego love Dakka, I would imagine it is not worth the headache if GW legal drops of papers, even if they have no case what-so-ever

I've read that, but I didn't think that applied in this situation Ouze. The rules you referred me to specify what to do if something happens to material I posted or threads I created, but I had nothing to do with the thread in question (I might be overlooking what you were pointing out, though, and if so, my bad). My line of thought was that a private message sent to a mod would get little to no result because A) I kind of thought that the mods are somewhat autonomous, so unless I happen to guess which mod locked it I wouldn't even be able to get an answer, and B) I think that a private message carries a more gossipy, nosy, "I just want to know what's going on" connotation, and my inquiry is based in a desire to know what the rules are. I thought it was better to go to the forum dedicated to site operations for a question about those operations. I don't know what crime I've committed for this thread to be locked.

If it's not your thread, then it's not your worry. The Mods don't make it a habit of discussing their actions with those not involved. Sadly, this means you'll just have to keep on guessing. But there are pretty good assumptions in this thread.

It's clearly a religious reason.
Some of the MODs are somewhat finicky when it comes to technology (They don't believe in it) and so they lock threads every now and then.

That's just the thing. If a thread gets locked, I think it is my worry. It's kind of the worry of every poster. Shouldn't we have a right to know what rules got broken? It's always possible for the rules to be applied in a way that someone didn't foresee or understand, and in this case (since I cannot understand in what way the thread in question violated one of the rules) I think I should have a right to know how the mods are interpreting the rules in order to place the thread in question into the 'lockable' category, for the sole reason of avoiding the same action. I don't think I'm being unreasonable in asking for clarification as to how the rules are being applied.

The guy who started the thread most likely knows, so if he wants to come forth and give a reason then he can.

Don't make a thread talking about creating and sharing 40K IP PDFs and you will be fine. That is the interpretation I'm getting from the lock.

See, that's just it. There has been threads like that which did NOT receive a lock, so I have to wonder why this one is different. Like this thread, for example. Both threads ask users to submit ideas for the eventual goal of an unauthorized book (based on Games Workshop's intellectual property) which will not gain the author(s) any financial profit.

So, is it the PDF angle? Has something changed in the last year and a half with regard to policy? The two threads appear very similar to me, and while one was allowed to go on, the other was locked within one post of its formation. Wasn't The Lord Inquisitor born from an idea which started on Dakka? (Or am I smoking crack? I might be...) In any event, I've seen threads asking for contribution to webcomics, animated films, or other 40k related works not sanctioned by Games Workshop without seeing them shut down.

I'm not questioning the right of the mods to close the thread, I just want to avoid stepping on the same land mine myself.

And as a side note, I didn't think of PM'ing the original poster. But I've only had one thread locked when I didn't specifically ask a mod to do so, and I wasn't informed of it by the mods. (Although I was informed of it by the troll who told me he was going to get my thread locked earlier that day since he took offense to my question.) This still seems like the most reasonable course of action, but if it fails to elicit a response after a reasonable length of time I'll go down my ladder of reasonability and PM the poster as well as a few random mods that I consider to be friendly. I just thought I would try this first.

Follow the rules and contact management.

Again, the rules only state to contact management if it is your thread that was locked/removed. This seemed to be the appropriate step, given the circumstances. If a reasonable amount of time should pass with no adequate response, then I will attempt to contact someone directly in regards to this.

Remember that posting content on this site (or any internet site, for that matter) is a privilege, NOT A RIGHT. Please treat it that way. If something you post is removed due to one of the issues outlined above do not be offended or take it personally. Evaluate what you posted and think about why it might have been removed. If you have any questions as to why something you posted was deleted or why your account has been suspended, please feel free to e-mail any questions to: webmaster@dakkadakka.com

Remember that posting content on this site (or any internet site, for that matter) is a privilege, NOT A RIGHT. Please treat it that way. If something you post is removed due to one of the issues outlined above do not be offended or take it personally. Evaluate what you posted and think about why it might have been removed. If you have any questions as to why something you posted was deleted or why your account has been suspended, please feel free to e-mail any questions to: webmaster@dakkadakka.com

Remember that posting content on this site (or any internet site, for that matter) is a privilege, NOT A RIGHT. Please treat it that way. If something you post is removed due to one of the issues outlined above do not be offended or take it personally. Evaluate what you posted and think about why it might have been removed. If you have any questions as to why something you posted was deleted or why your account has been suspended, please feel free to e-mail any questions to: webmaster@dakkadakka.com

Truly, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him read.

If action was taken against you, would you want the management to broadcast it to everybody?

Did you PM the user to see if he got any news?

Management has no obligation to justify their actions.

Thank you for your attempt to help, Ouze, but I think you missed what I was saying above. I point out that the following segments of what you quoted. "If something YOU post is removed," "Evaluate what YOU posted," "If you have any questions as to why something YOU posted..."

I didn't post the thread, Ouze, and I didn't post in it. Since I have some doubts as to whether or not that gives me the right to PM a mod about the status of the thread, I ask here, which is the appropriate forum for a question about site operations.

I haven't violated any rules, and I'm not doing anything wrong. There is no call for condescension.

When you see something that you find silly, rude or insulting first assume that perhaps there is more to it than you initially thought.

And d, if I had action taken against me, I would not expect my infraction to be broadcast publicly. (I don't see a need for a thread saying User X got banned for Infraction Y) But I would expect that information about my disciplinary action to be available on request. Maybe not specifics about my actions, but certainly about the rules I broke. If someone sees keeping those infractions secret as somehow helping me, then it's help I don't want.

No, I haven't PM'ed the user yet. Like I said when I was responding to pretre, I'm not going to do that unless this thread fails to get an appropriate response within a reasonable amount of time.

And while you are correct that on this forum management has no obligation to justify their actions, it is certainly good form for them to do so. And, I am fully within my rights to politely request clarification on their reasoning.

One of the good things about Dakka is that individual moderation, for the most part, has always been done in private.

The only time we usually get red text is when a users posts were edited by a mod (to give the reason) or a general warning to multiple users in a thread.

If the OP broke a rule, then that is between the OP and the mod. The OP can speak if he wants. Other than that you have no right to know why any actions were taken. It's pretty simple really.

Again, the only thread of mine that was locked was done so with no information given to me, so I have no reason to expect that the poster in question will know either.

And you're right, it is very simple. I do not have the right to demand an explanation from the moderators, but I do have the right to politely request clarification, which I am doing.

(Your second to last post was posted while I was editing my third to last post. I edited MY second to last post to respond to your post, during which time you posted your last post. Just letting you know so you didn't miss something. Sorry about the confusion on that.)

 Jimsolo wrote:
I haven't violated any rules, and I'm not doing anything wrong. There is no call for condescension.

Fair enough, my apologies.

Nonetheless, I think you should email anyway. I am confident they have seen this thread and don't wish to publicly state the reason, which is (and this is speculation) that they will lock down any thread that even has a whiff of infringing what GWS considers to be their IP, and the one in question clearly appears to be going to do.

Generally speaking, moderators should (and do) post a notice as to why a thread is being locked.

However, I'm pretty sure in some cases they feel like the reason the thread is being locked is so obvious that they don't bother...unfortunately moderators live and breathe the rules everyday so sometimes what is obvious to them isn't obvious to everyone else.


I haven't gotten the info from the moderator that locked this thread (so I'm speculating here), but this thread's topic is a bit convoluted, but appears to request help from other users to create an online SM resource that also includes Games Workshop's codex material as part of that resource. So in other words, Dakka is being used to recruit people to steal copyrighted materials so as to disseminate those materials across the web.

We do not want this website to be party to those types of activities, so we tend to lock any threads that: offer copyrighted material without permission of the copyright holder, request information on where to get a hold of copyrighted material without the permission of the copyright holder, or even to discuss how it should or would be possible to do either of these things.

 Jimsolo wrote:
Again, the only thread of mine that was locked was done so with no information given to me, so I have no reason to expect that the poster in question will know either.

Yak posts some good information (as he should, seeing as he's admin and owner), but just browsing through your 110 threads started, you've got 2 locked threads. Both of those threads have received public reasons as to why they were locked. In 95% of the cases there is a reason stating why it was locked.

Just to refresh you, you had a rules question that was closed by Insaniak because the topic of conversation had devolved into FAQs are/aren't valid rules.

And for the Ultramarines Hate thread, Janthkin locked it because people were getting angry, and the attacks were starting to get personal.

With the thread in question, it definitely seems as Yak said, that there was a point of someone trying to get GW materials collected in a single place and then distributed across the web. NOW that being the case, if the OP was trying to create a PDF of a fluff-filled document of the Codex Astartes, that detailed the fluff side of the rules, and have it written by Roboute himself, then I could see a thread like that being allowed, though it certainly would be more at home in the Dakka Fiction section of the website. Though if this was the OP's idea and intention, he could have phrased it far better.

 Jimsolo wrote:
See, that's just it. There has been threads like that which did NOT receive a lock, so I have to wonder why this one is different. Like this thread, for example. Both threads ask users to submit ideas for the eventual goal of an unauthorized book

Mods don't read every thread or every post. Mods will look at threads that were flagged by someone (that little yellow triangle in the upper right of each post). It's possible someone flagged one thread and not the other.

That's why I flag every thread I read, just in case I've been insulted or offended and it hasn't sunk in, yet...

 kronk wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
See, that's just it. There has been threads like that which did NOT receive a lock, so I have to wonder why this one is different. Like this thread, for example. Both threads ask users to submit ideas for the eventual goal of an unauthorized book

Mods don't read every thread or every post. Mods will look at threads that were flagged by someone (that little yellow triangle in the upper right of each post). It's possible someone flagged one thread and not the other.

That's why I flag every thread I read, just in case I've been insulted or offended and it hasn't sunk in, yet...

Yup, they are people with real lives to live and families, and pets, and the occasional warhams to play. To be honest, I felt that the OP in the Ork Cookbook made it pretty clear that what he was trying to create food recipes with an Ork theme to them, rather than creating a text that could be construed as some form of piracy...

 Alfndrate wrote:

 Jimsolo wrote:
Again, the only thread of mine that was locked was done so with no information given to me, so I have no reason to expect that the poster in question will know either.

Yak posts some good information (as he should, seeing as he's admin and owner), but just browsing through your 110 threads started, you've got 2 locked threads. Both of those threads have received public reasons as to why they were locked. In 95% of the cases there is a reason stating why it was locked.

Just to refresh you, you had a rules question that was closed by Insaniak because the topic of conversation had devolved into FAQs are/aren't valid rules.

And for the Ultramarines Hate thread, Janthkin locked it because people were getting angry, and the attacks were starting to get personal.

With the thread in question, it definitely seems as Yak said, that there was a point of someone trying to get GW materials collected in a single place and then distributed across the web. NOW that being the case, if the OP was trying to create a PDF of a fluff-filled document of the Codex Astartes, that detailed the fluff side of the rules, and have it written by Roboute himself, then I could see a thread like that being allowed, though it certainly would be more at home in the Dakka Fiction section of the website. Though if this was the OP's idea and intention, he could have phrased it far better.

Earlier, I specified that I've only had one thread locked when I didn't specifically ask a mod to do so. (The YMDC thread was locked after I PM'ed Insaniak and requested that a mod lock it.) I'm sorry for the confusion there, Alf. I know why the Ultramarine thread was locked, I was just trying to clarify that the mods do not necessarily PM someone when they are locking a thread. (To clarify: I know why both my threads got locked. One was locked at my request after it got off topic, and the other was locked after some people degenerated into name-calling.)

Surely you can see where the hair has been split mighty thin in this case, and I might be justifiably confused? Now that I have greater clarification from Yakface, I can proceed about my day with joy-joy feelings. Thank you to everyone who tried to help, I appreciate it.