It seems like, in the past few weeks, suddenly lots of questions are being "locked" to disable/hide comments. (Eg) To my knowledge there was no "comment war" or such for these questions, they were just arbitrarily locked.
Is there some reason for this change?
Can anyone explain what metrics are being used to decide which questions to lock?
My main complaint is that all comments are (at least temporarily) erased, hiding valuable contributions to the discussion.
But there's also the point that this change in policy occurred rather suddenly, with no explanation. It leaves contributors feeling that management of the site is incredibly arbitrary, turning on the whims of a few big-wigs.