Delay in closing threads

You have a new "feature" which I think is causing some issues. When a moderator announces that a thread is being closed, it often stays open for quite some time. People keep replying, thus propagating the confusion that --eg closing a duplicate--is supposed to prevent.

well yes quite, but any moderator, indeed any member at all, can report a thread as a duplicate, but only the moderator of the relevant forum has the jurisdiction to action the closure itself. and if one of the 2 or 3 mods isn't online, it's not going to happen. This isn't a new feature at all though, the only thing there that's *ever* changed is that all moderators can post one of a few templated replies for speed. There's no framework at present within the software to do anything funkier than that... that's just the way most forums work. I've advocated more "out there" methods for even a very large member census to permit a thread to be automatically closed, but this would all be a lot of extra coding away from the standard forum software.

To add to Acid's comments, when a mod comments that a thread is set for closure (whether by using one of the templates or freehand0 that is usually a signal for everyone to leave the thread alone until a mod gets there. It's rare for threads to not be closed relatively quickly - we are a worldwide team - but occasionally real life intrudes enough to prevent that particular forum's mods to be around.