Hmm i do think that it should be reconsidered to reopen Jaicee her thread ,after so much effort it must have felt very disheartening for it to be locked before it had a chance to become active while users have been asking her to make her own thread about it.
Also i'm sure it is possible to use the same text and put parts of them in a spoilerwindow.

I'll only speak to the matters that I recall giving any input on.

First, this is more in general than to you in particular, I don't think never reporting anyone is necessarily a virtue. I'm not saying to go reporting posts that don't deserve it, but the report button is there for a reason. We don't have eyes everywhere, and it also gives us a better sense of what kinds of things the community as a whole thinks is crossing the line. I'm not trying to absolve moderators from all responsibility in tracking users, since that's like most of our job, but at the same time, putting more eyes on problematic behavior is only going to help eliminate it.

As for the topic that was locked, it was simply seen as a duplicate thread. At this point, there were 2 active threads specifically addressing reviews/thoughts on the game (one for MC reviews and a spoiler topic for impressions of the game, and various other topics about aspects of the game. In general, if there's a designated topic for something, we want to keep things in that topic. In particular when there's a big new game, we don't want a new thread for every opinion on it. We don't really evaluate it based on how much effort we think went into it or w/e. In really particular the TLOU2 topics had been consistently going off the rails and have required pretty vigilant monitoring. Keeping the amount of topics more limited makes that easier. For the most part, locking the thread really had nothing to do with the actual content. It definitely had nothing to do with you in particular, as we would have responded the same way if the same thing had been posted by another account.

If you spoke to the community and people seemed to want your take on the game would that have influenced the decision?  Maybe. I don't want to speak for the mod team, but it's definitely something I would have taken into consideration. But that's a sort of unusual circumstance that we didn't even really consider. I don't anticipate making a rule change in the future to specifically allow something like that, but (and again I don't want to speak for everyone) there's a chance we could make exceptions in the future.

With all of that being said, perhaps we should have recognized that you did put time into it, and communicated better. I'm 99% sure that I'm the one who brought the thread up and suggested locking it, so that's mainly on me, and I'll think more about how I'll deal with that sort of thing in the future.

I'm sorry you don't feel like you belong here.  That's not really my perspective, but I guess that's subjective.  What I can tell you objectively is that we are not getting a large volume of reports on your posts.  I don't recall if there have been any, but if there have been, it's a relatively small number. So there's not a large number of users gunning for you. As for the mod team, you've only been moderated a couple of times, so if we were looking to get rid of you, then we're doing a pretty awful job. For my part there's nothing I see you doing terribly wrong. 

Without further context, this is concerning.

I'm glad to know that there aren't lots of reports coming in about me! That actually does surprise me. I'm sorry. Paranoia is one of my personal struggles sometimes. I didn't mean to get overly defensive.

Anyway, I was just throwing those cases out as examples. There have been lots more (like lots of my threads get closed, not just that particular one, for example) and that was really my core point. I was just looking for what I could do to make this stuff happen less often.

Concerning the specificity of the thread we're talking about that got closed though, the exact explanation I was given for that was, quote: "We don’t need another topic on this game. Just put this in the Spoiler Thread." Lo and behold though that despite 'not needing another topic on this game', more, qualitatively more provocative, topics on The Last of Us Part II subsequently appeared without being closed, causing me a great deal of confusion as to why mine was singled out. Anyway, I did follow the advice and re-post the content on the spoiler thread, but of course it was practically invisible there, as you can easily see by the stark difference in up-votes between the two places. Clearly having a separate thread, even just for a few hours, gave my thoughts more notice than they received when confined to an all-purpose story discussion thread. I didn't write all that with the intention of it not being seen by anyone. Those also weren't all of my thoughts on the game by a long shot that I intended to write, they were just the ones that came to mind right away that particular day. I would've subsequently added a lot more in that same thread. I largely gave up discussing the story after that experience though. That was just discouraging.

Anyway anyway, I'm glad I there's no larger issue going on. That's good to know and peace of mind.

My thinking about it was that most people who purchase a video game do so within the first week and it's now been a full month since launch, so the average player would've now had at least three weeks to play through the first two hours of the game to get to the plot point I "spoiled".

To my way of thinking, expecting people to spoiler tag that particular plot point in the game at this stage is only marginally distinct from asking people to spoiler tag that...

I mean it seemed like the whole internet knew about that particular plot point in TLOU2, including those who haven't played the game. I mean I also posted the exact same mock review on another forum that's mostly inhabited by conservative elderly people who don't play console games under the heading "Conservative-Quality Video Game Reviews" and added two more for Paper Mario: The Origami King and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. All three respondents laughed. Here though the same content gets me a thread ban threat. That's because elderly Donald Trump enthusiasts have a better sense of humor than this community does.

Also yeah, my post was the only one that resulted in a threat.

But it appears my presumption was wrong, as multiple people subsequently complained that I'd spoiled things. So yeah, sorry about that.

Anyway, it was just one piece of a much larger picture that had formed in my mind about what's been going on here lately, not the whole thing.

Honestly, we didn't need another thread about TLOU2, and we would have preferred that that was The Last of Them *rimshot*. That being said, it'd be hard to justify a blanket ban on threads about the game. I know a little while after that there was a topic about the game selling 4 million, and I thought "great another TLOU thread". But, in that case I don't think there was another active thread specifically for sales (if there was I missed it). So, nothing really to do about it. There may have been others that were borderline, but this was a case where it was clear that there was an existing thread which was appropriate.

As for the thread giving more of a platform, of course a separate thread will get more attention, sure, but everyone could use the same rationale to make duplicate threads on any topic. If we know the community had expressed a particular desire for your take, that's something we would take into consideration (again not saying we'll actually allow it), so that's maybe something I'll think about for the future.

That's all I have to say about that particular issue. 

Edit: As for the thread ban... I don't want to beat you up since you seemingly admitted being in the wrong, but yeah, I think that was entirely warranted. I'm not sure how long we have to wait before spoilers are acceptable, but it's way more than a month. I believe I was discussing Mass Effect a couple of month back and I tagged

I actually deleted at least one comment, and I'm pretty sure gave a warning to someone posting spoilers about the original FF7. Point is that this wasn't something personal, it's just something we're very strict about, which I'm pretty sure is what the community wants. 

As far as communities of elderly conservatives go, I would imagine that they probably don't have much interest in actually playing the games so much as they care about complaining about them, especially in terms of this particular game. On the other hand, our community is geared towards people who are more likely to play games, so we're definitely more concerned about spoilers.

Remember the olden days when there was a difference between playfully trolling and just being a jackass ?
It is often that people just cannot tell those two apart and they need to see an extreme to view the one that ''trolled'' at them as an extreme person,or some just want to be upset about some aspects of life and think everyone fits their view of the world.
Now i think if you follow the dictonary that trolling is always some kind of negative but it was surely used in a much lighter way back in the days when people had a thicker skin,i once did lead one of the top guilds in Europe in an MMO and we joked with eachother constantly in chat and considered that trolling so i understand that there can be some sort of clash of different perceptions with people of different ages.

Nonetheless context is key.

It's the same with the thumbs down in the news section,gives people too much power to act without consequences.

It breeds and attracts negative users,those that consume entertainment just to hate like you got with youtube and twitch but in a milder version,i'm very much against giving nonconstructive power in the hands of a community.

Some sort of creditsystem could be handy.

When a user makes multiple unreasonable reports in a certain period of time, you take away his/her ability to report for a while.But i know i'm just saying theoritical things and that it's always more difficult and takes a good amount of work to actually implement such changes.

Bolded: yes it can but normally people are psychologically more invested in letting disagreement show instead of agreement,so we could assume thumbs up to be more sincere or atleast a bigger amount of them.

It can have that yes although not at the same frequency and being positive could have less weight in being problematic (but that does not add to the solution)

You could take away both thumbs up and thumbs down but that again would take away a form of interaction that many people may enjoy,or a grade system with stars so all people that like and dislike are bundled together in that one rating could help.( it will still be open for abuse but those seeking to abuse will cancell eachother out a bit)