Please let us discuss about potential new features without locking every thread up

I know beta forums are mainly for discussing new features but feature requests for these specific systems are on-topic. It really baffles me that half of the threads I've followed get locked up by certain moderator.

I would understand thread locking if these threads were fully off-topic but they usually aren't and we really don't have a proper place on the forums to even discuss feature requests afaik (using feature request system isn't forum discussion and we very rarely get any staff responses in them).

So, I'm requesting tad looser policy on thread locking: please allow discussions that are still on topic and don't try to silence people who try to keep constructive discussion going. If you are worried about "noise" as some call it, just let people separate the discussions with a thread tag [suggestion] [request] etc, as long as it's related to the new system at hand (and not requesting something that's not relevant to the forum section at all).

For example, we have physics previews, it would be logical that people can suggest features to be implemented on these previews as it's part of community interaction. Or if we have graphics/srp discussion, it would be logical that people could ask/propose certain functionality there as that's where all the related discussion is already.

Splitting "discussion" between forums and feature requests (that almost no-one in the community follow) doesn't really do any favors to anyone. Also locking certain threads doesn't prevent people from making new similar threads, it actually happens all the time and in the end just splits the discussion even more, which surely can't be the point here.

 

It depends which subforum they are happening on.

On the face of it, perhaps threads are locked with seemingly increased frequency. However, a lot of times this is in, for example, the 2018.2 beta forum. And the focus of that forum really should be kept strictly to features that are actually in 2018.2. So, I have a different attitude to that forum compared to, for example, the graphics experimental previews forum where ongoing multi-year work by unity is being discussed. Not that my attitude towards this counts for anything.