Exactly.

And as far as I understand from this
http://www.gamesas.com/topic/724862-forum-rules-and-general-information/page__p__10470780#entry10470780
thread... this 200 limit is just because bad programming.

Indeed. Every time I see a thread get locked on page 7 I think that it was due to a rule violation

The post limit needs to be changed to 300!

Viva le revolution!

Which doesn't happen anymore. And to which making new topics would actually worsen the issue.

How exactly did you come to that conclusion?

Having different limits for different forums isn't practical. If these locks were handled automatically we could probably set something up by forum, but this isn't the case.

If someone asks a question shortly before a thread is locked, and no one answers it, they're welcome to re-post it in the new iteration.

The original reason for having the limit was because the UBB software we used was having problems (these were by far the largest and busiest forum using the software). But this reason became defunct in 2004 when we switched to IPB, and it's only mentioned there to give some historical context.

The issue is that it's clearly not really suitable for a lot of types of topics. Namely mod support topics, it just makes things so much more difficult for everyone.

And while that is true, that doesn't always happen. A forum search on a particular issue might reveal 17 topics which you'd have to sieve through, as opposed to just one single, central support topic.

While I don't necessarily agree with letting topics go on forever, I do think that the post limit needs to be increased. On a note in favor of a larger post limit related to the above is if there were someone who wanted to search thread X for something. Right now they will have to either to a broad forum search (which will return lots of crap and would be very intensive) or do a search of thread X, thread X', thread X", and so on (which would cause them to possibly hit flood control as well as mean running the same query multiple times, which isn't efficient). If it's just one thread (or a significantly smaller number of threads due to an increased post limit), searching because much more easier both on the servers and the people running them.

Just as an example, in the recently closed "http://www.gamesas.com/topic/1342786-pc-xbox-360-ps3-and-why/ topic. It was closed due to the post limit as I was in mid reply. Therefore my reply was lost, the person who asked me a question won't get an answer, and the results of the poll and discussion are now limited to whoever happened to be online in the day it was opened for. It's just ridiculous. It's like closing a shop at peak time because you've served 200 customers today, despite the fact you'd have many, many more sales if you left the shop open.

There'd be no reason to close the shop apart from to stick to an arbitrary limit that's been set. All that's happening is you're limiting customers and sales.

actually, i'd say it's more like closing up shop after 200 sales because people who already purchased their item started lollygagging around the store doing random things unrelated to the store, causing other customers to not be able to make their purchase

and you can blame that thread you linked to getting locked so soon on the people who posted what they already answered in the poll... theres no need for people to reply with just "PC", "Xbox", or "ps3" and nothing more then "because my XX is junk"

You mean like a closing time?

In that case, you just remove the troublesome people from the store. That happens here, if anyone kicks off, the post gets reported and the mods remove it. They're really good at keeping topics on track, and if it does spiral out of control, the topic is closed after being reviewed. That makes sense and is something I totally agree with, and is something the mods here are really amazing and efficient at doing.

If you have a poll, you're going to get posts like that. I wouldn't call any post meaningless unless it's utter spam. People mentioning why they use their platform of choice, what platform they'd like to use, if they're planning on keeping to a console/PC on other games or the next generation. Sure, it's not the most thrilling conversation of all time, but it's certainly not meaningless. It's going to be popular, it's going to have a lot of replies. The topic shouldn't be punished just because it's popular.
Closing time is because it's not financially viable to keep the store open all day. How many people are going to want to buy clothes at 3:30AM? Not many.
If it is financially viable to keep the store open 24 hours a day, then they do. Like large supermarkets. They have enough people coming in in the early hours to make it viable to keep it open.

Even if a shop closes, it opens again the next day. People aren't forced out of the shop just because there's been a lot of people there that day. They don't go "right, we've served 200 people, everyone out".
Forums are constantly open, they never close, they're always available. It's not like closing somewhere because it's over capacity, that doesn't happen on a server operated by a huge company. Putting an arbitrary limit on topics just defeats the point of having this freedom.

To address that point of the anology isn't that the same as opening a continuing thread?

Store anologies? Okay.

Stores close when they're no longer economically viable, and open again when they are.

Threads should close when they've run their course, otherwise you're just going to get off-topic banter and spam. Either we leave the decision of when up to the moderators' (at which point closure is likely permanent, or at least long-term), or some sort of limit is set. If there's enough on-topic interest to continue, the thread reopens anew. That makes sense to me.

No, it's not. Not every topic gets re-opened. Sometimes the author re-posts it, sometimes they don't. Regardless of how efficient you try to make it, you're always going to lose replies and discussion value by closing topics when they get popular.
I completely agree topics should close when they run their course. I don't agree that topics should get closed just because they're popular. If a topic runs off course on the first page then it's closed, as it should be. But if a topic is still going strong and the conversation is really booming on the seventh page, it still gets closed, despite the fact that there was a really relevant conversation going on. It makes no sense. You're punishing popular topics for no reason.

if its no one but trouble makers then there's no use leaving the store open, and it is spam to reply with what you already answered in the poll, it's technically no different than making two identical posts in the same thread

If discussion is really booming, someone is going to be interested enough to post a new one.

The post limit reduces clutter because discussions that aren't interesting enough to be worth continuing don't continue, rather than trickle on indefinitely. But discussions that are worth continuing do continue.

Post limit is fine. If the topic is good people will make another one, where it will continue. A post that is a thousand pages, no one will read. Plus it is a natural stopping point. Mods can step in and see if its even worth making another one. If there was no post limit, garbage threads could run on forever before someone uses the report button.