From the perspective of a participant in the discussion
It didn’t feel good to be locked out of the discussion like that.
Especially as there are many other threads which clog up email inboxes - in the dev group discussion which @Nadia mentions in her comment, I had been talking specifically about the ‘Open Call’ blogpost comments. Those comments weren’t closed to avoid filling people’s inboxes, but this discussion was? I don’t know the thought process behind the decision but it doesn’t project a good image. It looks like ER LBG is shutting down comments to stop an embarrassing conversation spreading to too many of the ER community members.
The decision may indeed be totally innocent, it may be purely coincidental that this thread was the first to be locked, and that’s fine if so. But there is no avoiding the fact that it looks bad.
As a participant in the discussion, I also didn’t appreciate the thread being closed very shortly after @Alberto had misunderstood/misrepresented my position, leaving me with no opportunity to refute or explain what I actually meant, outside of starting a completely new thread which many people will not read.
That thread is here, by the way.