Board Thread:Consensus Track/@comment-3279282-20171010145040/@comment-1251315-20171012110041

Seelentau wrote: I'm not sure if the existence of those forums is justified with "it's one form of contribution", when the contribution simply isn't good. I mean, it's the same for the wiki itself, right?

Maybe we should go back to our roots in a way. It's not like we absolutely need those forums. At least not the VS board. I know it makes the wiki more attractive, but it doesn't attract those that actually help out the wiki, I think. I wasn't trying to justify the forum's existence by "they're a kind of contribution" ;)

My point was largely that, yes I agree more should be done to rein in the shitposting and low-effort discussions, but outright removal is probably going to do very little and will make the wiki even more inactive than it is, since there's only a tiny number of people editing (yourself, BerserkerPhantom, Omnibender, Sarutobii2 and one or two other non-sysops: if there are others, I apologise for not noticing!).

As I mentioned before, the "Discussions" module will eventually get enabled on the wiki whether people agree to it or not (they go for active, high profile, wikis) and that's just a magnet for low effort shitposting in general. Almost nothing can be done to really prevent it, except continued moderation (and even that wouldn't eliminate the issue entirely) and educating users.

If the VS threads board is as inactive as the "Slug Princess00" user claims them to be, I don't think there's much of a problem beyond just the occasional low-effort thread (which would be best solved by closing them and encouraging the OP to make more of an effort to have a discussion), especially as the few times I look at the wiki, the forums aren't that much more active than the main wiki itself.

I'll admit I don't check the forums often (or claim to have read every single thread in existence), but from the few I have seen, maybe the right course of action is just to have more stricter moderation on what gets posted and the like. /shrug