Too many rules might intimidate new members.
That may not be a great thing, but then again, it might not be such a bad thing either. There are a LOT of people who sign up and never actually become members, and there are a LOT of people who actually sign up for legitimate advertising Spam. But then again, we have those who sign up for one conversation, and that's not too bad. We've had Mark Evanier pop up on a thread about the new Garfield show, and that was a delightful surprise.
But if someone becomes a member, they have to have some commitment to being one and that commitment means following the rules. Even simple unenforced etiquette ones.
For the record, i don't support a timeframe for closing old threads as sometimes there may be fully valid reasons for responding to them or bringing the thread in question out of its coma. Just because some people who fail to understand proper netiquette don't understand this and bump threads in a manner that shouldn't be done doesn't mean that there are also "right" ways and valid reasons to revive an older thread's discussion.
And i STRONGLY PASSIONATELY oppose deleting old threads. Those are our history. It's already a tragic shame that the old delphi forum posts are lost. So much valuable information/insights gone.
It's a complicated matter, sure. There are threads that are old and have conversation potential, but there are those news threads for abandoned projects that, when bumped, look like there's either some new information or that someone somehow managed to find a copy of the test and leak it.... only to find "I liek teh ice creamz" or some nonsense. Locking these threads, unfortunately is the only way to deal with that. And this would be like a 5 year down the road of no new posts. Sure, we've had old topics that always manage to maintain conversation ("What sketches scared you as a Kid")... those would be safe.
However, no one is stopping anyone from creating multiple threads on the same subject if somehow there's an update or leaked footage, or the need to discuss why it didn't happen again. I mean, we have to have a "Who's your favorite Muppet" thread started at least once or twice a year. If it's somewhere buried under the 10th page or something, then it's okay to create another thread on the subject. It's only annoying if there's 3 or more on the same subject not even a week apart on the same page.
So we come to the choice of 2 things... stricter rules which would scare off potential members or locking/deleting old threads. None of them sound good, but we need to get a handle on members who are here for the sake of being here and don't contribute to any conversation.