I understand that questions and answers are locked to prevent unnecessary comments or content changes. But why does the locked state also prevent votes from going through?

Take this question and its incredibly popular answer for example: RegEx match open tags except XHTML self-contained tags

This question was locked almost a year ago. This means that it has been unable to receive any votes for all this time. The lock message, however, has nothing to do with votes:


Now lets look at its insanely popular answer: https://stackoverflow.com/a/1732454/1317805

This answer was locked back in March last year, meaning the answer too has been immune from voting all this time. This lock message again states nothing about votes:


Why are votes blocked when posts are locked? Doesn't this create a bias against the post?

  • 3
    Shameless self plug: Can we get a comments only lock? – yannis May 30 '13 at 10:03
  • @Yannis that would certainly be more relevant on both the question and answer in this post! – James Donnelly May 30 '13 at 10:06
  • I think they were locked also because moderators thought they are getting much much more upvotes than they deserve. – Danubian Sailor May 30 '13 at 10:47
  • 2
    @gnat I neglect to mark this one as duplicate. He know what is locked post just want the reasoning behind some of its features, which isn't provided in the faq. – Shadow9 May 30 '13 at 10:51
  • @gnat that doesn't answer the question of why votes are locked. – James Donnelly May 30 '13 at 10:51
  • How does it create a bias against the post? All it does is freeze its score and prevent the post from changing in any way. It's not like we're deliberately locking posts to stop them from being upvoted higher than it already is or downvoted lower than it already is. – BoltClock's a Unicorn May 30 '13 at 11:00
  • @Łukasz Lech: No, that's ridiculous. It was locked because people were repeatedly removing and restoring large parts of the answer. That's what is meant by "disputes about its content". – BoltClock's a Unicorn May 30 '13 at 11:01
  • 3
    @BoltClock'saUnicorn Well, as it currently stands, at some point in the future, the second answer on that regex question will eventually surpass Bobince's answer itself. This wouldn't be possible without the lock. So in that sense, yes there is bias. – Mysticial May 30 '13 at 11:34

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