Originally Posted by NWIFlyer

Just to expand on this: all the moderators here are volunteers. Some have more time than others, but the vast majority fit FT around their full-time jobs.

A thread would normally be locked for review for one or more of several reasons:
(a) there are across the board and ongoing examples of rule breaches where the mod needs to stop the immediate flow in order to perform a clean-up
(b) the thread is becoming heated and a temporary closure is needed to allow things to calm down
(c) based on available information (or sometimes lack thereof) there are doubts about the veracity of an OP's intent or motives. The thread might be closed to show other members that perhaps they should be wary of the contents, and to allow the mod to make further investigations.

You can see that each of these scenarios might well need wildly varying amounts of time to resolve. So alongside time zones and available mod resource we can add complexity of investigation.

Sometimes that review might mean the thread does not get opened again - in which case, although it may appear that the mod has not taken any action, the review will have taken place but by the time it completes it has moved a long way down the forum (in busy forums such as BA it only needs a day) and so there is little point in bumping a thread to put a further explanation in.

Conversely, if it's as simple as deleting some posts and adding some in-thread advice to members then that could be as short as 10 minutes.