Do the authorities of this forum have a way of preventing people from responding to a thread? I usually have no problem posting a response. Today, I felt I had a constructive comment on the thread about overly obese airline passengers. There were already 97 responses; however, when I clicked on "post a reply" -- which I tried about 5 times -- all I ever got was a full-screen version of the thread. Has anyone else encountered this problem?

Good question dwoodliff, I just went to that thread to see if I could reply and got the same result you did. But there are several other threads that have 200+ replies, so I am thinking that perhaps this is a sensitive subject and they want to limit the chance of nastiness and volatility.

When I?ve had an occasional problem posting a reply, I attributed it to the site being busy. I find this to be a very well designed and user-friendly forum.

There is another thread on here that now has the same thing happening. The AAAGGGH one is no longer able to accept replies. In that particular case a poster was getting a little too personal so I assume that is why they shut that one down. Bonniebroad knows what I'm talking about. They don't seem to pull all the threads that don't meet their criteria, they simply make them impossible to respond to.

Cars that occupy more than one space in a garage should pay for two spaces and the same applies to airline passengers.

Yes, there is a way to "freeze" a thread instead of deleting. Happens sometimes. Also some responses can be deleted without deleting or "freezing" the thread. Hang on, you'll see it all!

Jimshep: There was a little more I wanted to say than that on the "obese passenger" thread, but I agree precisely with your comment. Until the airlines start providing a few 1 1/2-size seats, they should charge double for overly-wide passengers.

By the way, is there a walk-thru maximum-size-gauge for people, like the airlines have for bags?

Donna

This is precisely why they froze that thread. You are talking about human beings, not bags, not cattle.

Hmm.... for security reason you go through metal detector, what if it's too narrow for horizontally challenged people?

Atilla: Well, then, how do airline personnel make a fair decision that won't be contested by the passenger?

It is a judgement call, hopefully done with sensitivity and tact. As stated in the other thread, there is only one airline that practices this policy, for obvious reasons.

have to admit...i was curious about the "aaagghhh" thread...oh well, guess i missed it. people say some crazy things on here! have they no other outlet for that?

jasper: the aaggghh thread is still there, you just have to go back a few days to see it. It is about 320 in the list of posts.

I don't think the overly large thread is frozen; I was able to get to the "post a reply" screen. When threads are frozen, you're not even given the option to post a reply.

Aside from freezing or deleting a thread, the only way fodors has to prevent a response is to ban the registered screen name, which is completely ineffective since all of us can register multiple screen names anyway.

Beachbum, it's not the screen name that gets banned, it's the ISP number, I remember the thread where Fodor's actually explained that. It was in regards to the San Jose troll.

Such a relief not to have to worry about reading or responding to an inquiry about San Francisco! I got to the point I didn't even open a thread that had anything to do with S.F.

Okay, I'm totally not computer-workings smart......... but can't there be more than one person with the same ISP number or something to that effect? And if you punish one, you punish a lot of other people, or am I totally wrong about this???? I thought someone explained it to me that way......

Faina: they banished the San Jose troll????!!!! When did that happen? Where's that Fodor's message - this I gotta see!

Bonnie, we may have the same ISP, for example, we both use NetZero. We have numbers with this ISP like 123 456 (yours) and 123 457 (mine). 2 people cannot have the same ISP NUMBER, only the ISP provider name would be the same, in my example NetZero.

I don't know where to look it up, any computer wizards here? Or they don't travel

Let me go look up a post where I asked a question related to this kind of thing. Thank you, FainaAgain, for trying to explain this to me. Let me research what someone told me before........... BRB