Well, the you may call it " your" thread, it really isn't yours . Just as when you start a conversation, is that conversation yours? One of the reasons the rules have been set to disallow members from deleting or closing threads they have started is that if I knew that someone could, at any moment, just pull the plug on the thread , I would not bother to type out and add any kind of lengthy reply to a post, as it would be at high risk of being effort wasted. It would be destructive to overall continuity of a discussion.