It means the mods have banned a poster (almost always a n00b) but lets the thread stand and we all go and gangpile.
It is a lot of fun, especially when the OP Really Means It.
Sometimes moderators find that a particular poster is just trying to disrupt the forum rather than add to a discussion. On these occasions they call the Spork Weasel and the Spork Weasel uses a nifty machine to call in the Viking Kitties.
The Viking Kitties ZOT those disruptors into their constituent atoms.
understand?
I haven't read through to see if you've been given a serious answer. There have always been people who come on FR to cause trouble. Usually they start a thread with a title that goes something like,
u freepublic guy ar a bunch of fasists"
Long ago the mods would kill the thread and revoke the user's posting privileges. I know I suggested once, and I'm sure some others did, that we should preserve some of these threads, even though FR removed the poster's privileges. Johnny Hart, in the old B.C. comic strip, used to write "ZOT!" every time someone got struck by lightning in the strip, and the term caught on. After that, zotted threads became a way for people to let loose, post goofy graphics, and have fun.
And that's sort of the history of the zot.
