I'm late on parade again, but personally I think locking a topic is better than deleting it. If you search on google for a topic which happens to have been covered on BM it will come up in the search results. Jo Blogs clicks on it and if the topic has been deleted they will just get a page not found on their screen, whereas finding the answer to their question may also make them consider becoming a member. The deleted threads will keep coming up until googlebot, etc do their next crawl.
actually they will get bounced to the active topics page rather than a page-not-found error
I'm in favour of deleting any topic which inaccurately shows the site in a bad light (someone ranting about BM, or two members having a petty argument etc)
![Locking topics (2) - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8mobileLQ.jpg)
![Locking topics (2) - Forums [Biker Match]](/images/backgrounds/strips/8desktopLQ.jpg)
