Bill, I'll try to respond to some of your points.
it doesn't take long to notice that as soon as a thread gets intresting with some good posts, it gets locked down
No - if a thread veers off-topic or has become nothing but repetition and long-winded blathering, it gets locked down. I remind you of the purpose of this forum, as stated on our home page:
Meet fellow forum members, find a common ground. Introduce new people to responsible firearm ownership. Posts must be related to firearms.
"Babes with guns" might be related to firearms, but tends to concentrate on the babes, which is not our focus here. The "Gangbangers" thread, as I mentioned when I closed it, had 223 posts and was 9 pages long. If anything worth saying about that had not been said, I didn't notice it. We've learned that once any thread gets over three or four pages, the signal-to-noise ratio gets way out of balance.
All this does over time is make a forum bland and Vanilla
On the contrary - it helps the forum to stay focused on its mission. We are unashamedly a 2A / RKBA / firearms forum. We do not want to become an "anything goes" type of forum: nor do we want a less-than-High-Road discussion, where profanity, personal attacks, deviation from topic, and flame wars are permitted. We hold ourselves to a high standard, and we look to our members to help us maintain that standard. As some of the earlier replies from our members have shown, I think we're achieving that objective.
I have had issue with it before esp. in the legal and politcal forum but I have just learned to not go there anymore. The legal and political forum is moderated by people that seem to just looking for an excuse to ban people. Why have such a forum if you will not allow people to talk freely about the issues?
Albanian, with respect, you're off base here. May I remind you of the purpose of the L&P forum, from our home page?
Get informed on issues affecting the right to keep and bear arms and other civil rights. Coordinate activism, debate with allies and opponents. Discuss laws concerning firearm ownership, concealed carry and self-defense.
Threads that don't fit into this definition, or purpose, will be closed. Also, threads that degenerate into name-calling, or political diatribes, are not wanted here. For those wanting to pontificate about "Republi-can'ts" or "Democrats", there are plenty of other forums and venues on the Internet to provide an outlet for their rants. We don't want it here. Another problem is the sheer blinkered, blind, stubborn persistence of those who can't or won't accept that their point of view isn't the only one. This applies particularly to those who rant and rave about the alleged fact that any law restricting the use of firearms is a violation of the Second Amendment. They completely ignore the fact that the same constitution that gave us the Second Amendment also set up legislative, executive and judicial powers to implement, administer and oversee the Constitution, and that the laws which govern us today have been judged to be Constitutional by those very Constitutionally-mandated authorities. We try to crack down on that sort of verbiage, because it's flat-out wrong, and doesn't get us anywhere. We encourage meaningful political debate within the confines of our mission, and threads that stay on track are not shut down.
The moderators here seem to be doing their best to manage a rapidly-growing user-base, many of whom are new, and many of whom haven't quite come to grips with the tone and style of discussion that this community has chosen to embrace. Rapid growth strains the bonds of any social group, and online groups more than most. During those transitional periods it's not uncommon to see inconsistencies in standards.
'Card, thanks for pointing this out. We are growing by leaps and bounds, and many of our new members haven't learned (yet) how we do things here. We do our best to impart a High Road standard by our own posts as moderators, and we greatly value the example set by many of our long-term members. Many of our newer members have fit in very well with this standard. Unfortunately, there are those who post first and think later . . . and this causes us some extra work as moderators. Generally, after a gentle hint, the problem disappears. With those like Gunkid and his ilk, stronger measures are sometimes necessary.
I'd like to conclude by pointing out that we do rely heavily on our members to alert us to problems. Every post has a "report this post to a moderator" icon next to it. You'd be amazed by how many "reports" like this we get every day. Usually it's not a moderator who first spots a problem - it's a member, who hits the "alert" button and warns us. Thanks to you all!
It is a bunch of BS. 
