imported post
Couple of thoughts.
Yes, the people of Montana, and yes, the people on this forum, absolutely have the right to discuss whatever they want to discuss.
What they don't have the right to is to use the resources of this privately owned forum to do so. We are all here at the courtesy of John and Mike. That's pretty much the end of the story.
Also, as I see it, locking a thread is one step before deleting a thread. If a thread offends somewhat, or perhaps the owners believe it will soon degrade substantially, it can be locked to prevent further violation. By that action, they are saying that it hasn't gotten so bad that they don't want anyone else to see what has already been said. Remember, the owners are just two folks like the rest of us, they don't have the time or the desire to babysit a potentially volatile thread just in case it turns south.
If the thread gets deleted, it's passed an even deeper threshold, and the owners are saying not only will we stop talking about this, we don't even want anyone to see how bad it got. I tend to think of a locked thread as a little bit of a friendly warning to always be careful that you are furthering the goals of the forum, and not detracting from the community as a whole. If you've been deleted, you crossed the line. Again, that's how I see it, and that may have no correlation whatsoever to how the owners see it.
For what its worth... YMMV...
TFred