Mods: Please do not lock posts when you delete them, barring extremely egregious behavior.

Deleting a post removes them from the sub, but allows people already engaging, for good or ill, to continue the discussion. Locking it just shuts everyone up. I have more than once written a long reply to a poster, only to find out that between the time I started writing and I hit 'post reply', you had locked the thread. So my time replying was entirely wasted, thanks to a moderation decision.

And this is pointless. Locking threads makes perfect sense if they are being brigaded, or otherwise being abused, but why lock a discussion if it is otherwise in good faith?

This has nothing to do with whether the OP itself meets the subs rules, I can understand deleting threads that don't. But LOCKING threads that don't only punishes the good faith participants of the sub who try to engage with questions without realizing they are going to be locked.

Put simply, threads should be locked for active abuse. They should not be locked (but they should be deleted) for simple rule violations.