Please let's not lock questions unless as an absolute last resort

Question

In connection to this, and the closing of Why are so many programmers arrogant?. The question was closed (unjustifiably, IMHO), then reopened by those of us who disagreed. The question has now been locked, preventing others from participating. I have a feeling this is going to happen to the Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers? as well (EDIT: this has happened, as predicted), which has been closed and reopened as well.

IMHO, even though both questions could potentially lead to flamewars, I think it is a credit to this community that there was not a single answer (apart from one joke answer that was subsequently deleted) that was potentially inflammatory. I fail to see why such questions should be locked, as long as the community wants it open. If the question turns into a close-reopen war, and is closed and reopened more than x times (say thrice), then perhaps it might be worth locking. Even then, it should be done on a case-by-case basis.

But as far as the "Why are so many programmers" arrogant question goes, it has only been closed and reopened once, and at least one of the high-rep users has said that he voted to close by accident.

Can someone please tell me why this decision was taken? Both questions are perfectly valid for programmers.se, and while such questions should be closed, locked (and probably deleted) on SO, doing so here merely amounts to censorship.

EDIT: OK, the unilateral closing of the atheist question has really pissed me off. If this happens a few more times, I see myself leaving the community for good. People were being respectful and the community at large had no problem with the question. It was closed once, and reopened once and had no close votes the last time I looked. That means that only 5 people felt strongly enough about it to vote to close it, and the rest were happy to let it be. This makes the "community-run" aspect of the website look like simply lip-service.

EDIT 2: I should clarify that I have absolutely nothing against vote-based closing. I may or may not agree with the closers, but at least everyone (at least those who have enough rep) is on an equal footing.

EDIT 3: Jeff has been talking about removing the "worst" 15-20% of questions. If this happens, I'm going to ask for my account on p.se to be deleted in protest. That's what voting and flagging are for. Remember, a closed question can be deleted if enough high-rep users cast delete votes. If I'd known that this site wasn't going to be strictly community-run, I would have approached participation very differently. Why should I be active on meta, cast close/delete votes or view flagged posts if every so often, the community's verdict is going to be overridden unilaterally?

Answer 1

The locker should at least write a comment or edit the question to justify the lock.

And since there's nothing like private mail, you can't send complaint to moderators or to Jeff for closing very interesting questions like Do programmers have higher tendency to be atheists than non programmers? .

Answer 2

Locking does not prevent people voting or commenting on answers: it just prevents the question from being edited or being answered.

In the particular case of Why are so many programmers arrogant?, an edit-war erupted when the original poster insisted on using the question as a platform to air his grievances with the people who closed it. I think after 41 answers, an accepted answer, and 36 thousand views, adding more answers isn't really an issue anymore.

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Edit

As I said elsewhere, if you guys can't understand why the atheist question was closed and locked, or why people are quickly closing questions like the homophobic or arrogant question, I don't know what to tell you.

This isn't 'nam, there are rules. If you want to ask shock questions and discuss any issue under the sun without any rules, use Yahoo! Answers instead of trying shoehorn "programmers" into a hot-button topic.

As a community, we need to be less stupid when it comes to identifying issues that are inflammatory or completely inappropriate for any public site, especially one that is supposed to be for professionals. Maybe it should be spelled out in the FAQ: "If asking or answering this question in the real world would have a high likelihood of someone yelling or getting punched, it is not appropriate for this site."