And apparently there are topics that will be closed if even the potential for things getting out of hand exist. Of course no list of such topics exists so who knows what may or may not get locked.
It's ironic in that one definition of a moderator is someone who acts as intermediary agent in bringing, effecting, or communicating. The primary effect seems to be just in abruptly ending communications.
It's kind of sad how at first there was overwhelming public support (95+ at the start) for news of the patch, but that waned with the delays (dropping to 90% at lock). Later polls seemed to show even move of a drop to where it seems to have swung from positive to negative. At what point do you have a "negative halo" effect and civfanatics gets a hit too?
