So what's the reason for preemptively locking the thread, and THEN having the discussion about whether to move it etc?
A thoughtful way to approach this would be to have a post linking out to a discussion like this, leaving the thread open and a timeout (maybe) on locking.
If you open a discussion, 90% of users participating in such thread would vote "no" and while discussion is ongoing, spam would be increasing. Threads like this are locked to prevent "spam."
I think we and the mods could handle a whole extra week or so of spam.
I wasn't suggesting that it was a vote either. A discussion, with some result that satisfied mods (they're in charge after all) which is at least informed by users' ideas.