unless its like porn or the big LW no-no of encouraging harm then why cant mods just lock it? why is it that delete is the only option to deal with violations of the guidelines. like half the topics deleted come under the trolling, spamming, attention-seeking, whatever category and are harmless in themselves. if they get locked then no one can reply, the OP doesnt get any more attention and the topic isnt relegated into darker realms where only mods can venture.
i've never known a forum where mods are so happy to delete when the option to lock it is there