First of all I'd like to say that it is unfair to restrict people to chatter on irc, since I can't use IRC at work. Government computers, ports banned for security reasons. Next of all, this is what the threads are here for, our enjoyment and comments on the game.. it hasn't gotten out of hand, no body is posting for the sake of just increasing post count. It's not wrong to comment on the number of posts, hence the topic of the thread.
I'd like to see Alec's point of view on this. Everyone has the write and freedom of speech.. and it hasn't been anything against the rules of the forums. I say let people post, and quite complaining. If you don't want to join the discussions, you don't have to, there's other threads. And it IS exceptable for a threads topic to change and drift from one to another as long as it gets back on point.
So there's my opinion on this subject. I see no reason that you should need to lock the thread Chibi.