I also always prefer pinging; it's much easier to see that a thread needs to be locked and I'm less likely to miss one.

I don't mind either way myself, although I do agree that if you are changing the title, make it clear whether you want it locked or not.

Pinging is quicker. If I'm on but not actively in the forums, then a ping will get my attention wherever I'm lurking on the site. It's also quicker if we just pop in for a few minutes to see how things are going.

I agree that I don't think that a lock post alert would really make things any faster or easier. I agree with Twocents, I know that I'm never annoyed by pings or comments! After all, that's kind of what we're all here for! (Unless it's , who's pinging us twice....flames).

so then… what is the purpose of the lock button? i was just thinking about it last night, i thought, "maybe it sends an alert to the mod so they know to lock the topic?" but then if that was the case, it should give some kind of indication that the click has been registered and the thing has happened, and since there is none of that, i concluded that it does indeed do nothing. unless it does do something, something we get no indication or explanation of… which would be kind of weird and mysterious… but yes, i think it'd be cool if it pinged the mod to say "lock this thread" instead of a person posting in the thread to say "pls lock"… then again it's easy to mis-click, especially since it's next to the "subscribe to thread" button. idk, if it doesn't do anything it shouldn't be there at all.

I definitely prefer to be pinged to lock a topic. Comments/mails to my profile aren't bad either.

If you want to just change your topic that's fine, just make it clear to us that you want us to lock it.