You've already got it. Green Room for pussies that need Nanny-Anc to protect them from "derp." Red Room for real Wordforgers. /thread
You blithering smegma breathed idiot! It's clearly not white people problems, but first world problems.
You say that I'm barking up the wrong tree but in the very next sentence you say that you do want to change things to suit your desires. So save me the weak deflection of trying to say that the idea is solely in the minds of not only myself but a healthy number of other posters. The only person you're bullshitting is yourself. You just don't get it. The whole point of WF and the RR is that it's what the posters make of it. If they turn it into a derp fest or right wing or left wing echo chamber that is up them. There are already multiple vehicles to have meaningful discussion. They are the mouse, scroll wheel on the mouse, finger swipe on the screen, self control, and the ignore function. Any attempt at trying to engineer the environment and exercise further control over the posters will only result in more problems. They learned this lesson for the most part in TNZ. They discovered that more and more rules and control efforts only makes things even more worse. Ask Hoser over at TBBS how he nearly lost his mind with The Think Tank. The solution to the Lisa era and the Think Tank was to take TNZ as close to how it was as the admin would allow. Now it works a whole lot better. Not ideal, but the posters made what they wanted out of it. So in the end we're right back at what I said how many pages ago; Say a couple of mea cuplas, realize that you've taken the place as far as you can over the past few years and live with it. The other is just pull the trigger on remaking the place as you see fit and quit bullshitting around.
You've just answered your own question, although Zombie said it more succinctly: http://wordforge.net/index.php?posts/2596752/
Then all you have to do is sit back and let it happen. There is a process somewhat analagous to natural selection that applies to discussion threads: When there really is something to discuss, they tend to stay very much on topic. When they get off topic, and degenerate into spam, trolling, and various other Wordforge pastimes, it is because the subject matter just isn't there. When Packard, RickDeckard and I were going on for pages and pages about determinism, no one bothered the thread. A few people popped in for a post or two, but most people didn't bother, and no one made any serious attempts to drag it off topic. When current events are staying current, the same thing happens. What happened to the Malaysian plane thread was that after a fairly short while there was nothing new to say. When there is, the discussion will resume all on its own, and it won't take any particular methods to keep it on topic. This is Wordforge, but it isn't TK. When we want to discuss things more or less seriously, we do so and it doesn't take any rule changes to make it possible. When we don't want to, we don't, and no rule change is going to make us do so. If we could be "managed," we would have all stayed in the Think Tank. You really are looking for a problem to justify some solutions, when there is no real problem here.
Which reminds me, didn't you moderate on TNZ and/or the Enterprise forum? at some point. I forgot about that until you mentioned it.
Another thing I just remembered...Anc was blustering a ton of shit about how the board doesn't do enough to attratct members. But since he's taken over I doubt we've gotten even one new member that wasn't originally from Starscape. How 'bout that shit? Also worth noting is with Tamar no longer on staff (or posting outside of Garamet's ACA thread, just to take the piss out of her) you can't blame any of this on her, either. This is all on Anc.
Actually, I can think of at least three new members not associated with Starscape. But it's true, we have not been all that successful at recruitment. At any rate, you people disappoint me. This thread is calling for disobedience. When are you all gonna get to it?
OK. I'll play: -Have all the members agree to a code of conduct when they log on. We can form a committee or a working group of some kind later to hammer out exactly what will be in the code. -Set a quota that each member must contribute X number of relevant threads per week. We can form a subcomittee of the committee to settle on the number and what constitutes "relevant." -In addition to new threads, each comrade will have a set number of replies to existing and new threads that they will need to make each week. I think the subcommittee of posting content can handle that. -All likes will be pooled and redistributed equally on a quarterly basis. -Failure to comply with any of these policies will result in an initial warning for the infraction. A second failure would result in the member being limited to posting in a special "re-education" forum. We could appoint a special committee to judge whether posters have rehabilitated themselves sufficiently to return to full posting privileges. These are just off the top of my head. I'm sure with some brainstorming we could build on this to really get WF going in the direction that is best for all of us.
I was a TNZ mod at the same time as Borgminister, Worf412 and Misfit Toy, starting right around the time that Asyncritus left, I think. Then I was in General Trek Discussion for a while.
All threads with insufficient traffic and population will be merged, to better simulate efficient, high-density urban living.
@John, what can be done with New Posts? Could the front page be made more 'New Post' friendly? Is there any way to have say the top three most recently commented threads in their own little box at the top of each forum? Anyone else have ideas for making New Posts more visible?
I already named some. Others have liked my posts, if they wish to speak up they can, but if they prefer to avoid this shitstorm people are so desperate to stir up, I am not going to drag them into it.
Way back in the day when I first came here, Borgs had this front page thingamajig that showed the ten most recent and/or commented on threads in the whole board, but it got scrapped kinda quickly. Honesly, I don't see the need to do that on a board this small though. It's pretty easy to navigate through threads; that was never a problem, even in WF's heyday.
Oh! Got another one: To ensure a diversity of discussions, we can assign responsibility for content areas to posters. Kind of like how actormike used to be the Hollywood Gossip Guy or Diacanu is the Comic Book Adaptation Guy. Tuckerfan could, for example have a weekly count of Technology threads he is expected to start. Gul could be responsible for finding controversial blogs for us to discuss. I could find stories from Fox to ensure we have both sides of the discussion represented. What else? Anc could do urban living content. 'Flow could handle farm news/rural. For that matter, we could put each of the content experts in charge of their area (with appropriate oversight, of course). If someone derails a technology thread or posts an inappropriate science article, Tuckerfan could warn them and move the offending content (or edit it to ensure correctness).
I can futz around with something, say a sidebar that can show a quick list of new posts. I'll get back to you on that. In the interim, you can try something I added a few minutes ago, which shows the number of new, unread posts in an alert format, making it highly visible. Just a test run. (To get rid of the large number, just click "Mark All Forums Read" on the right hand side of the page)