a debate subforum?

i understand that there's a lot of stigma against "serious discussion" threads in a forum, probably because how most of them tend to crash and burn either due to lack of interest or the discussion getting too heated and out of hand. it's discouraged people from making such threads in the first place, and as a result most of the threads in a forum tend to be skewed towards the direction of "hey look at this new tumblr/website/quiz/manga i found", besides the video game discussion threads.

i think having a controlled environment where users can discuss weightier issues generally shunned in a forum would be a good idea, if only to serve as a break from monotony. perhaps a system similar to firebans (a la firebot) can be implemented to keep problem users at bay?

i am fairly sure we have the critical mass of interested users necessary to establish such a subforum, and perhaps, given a chance, over time it can grow into a prominent community at smogon.

xenu said:

i understand that there's a lot of stigma against "serious discussion" threads in a forum, probably because how most of them tend to crash and burn either due to lack of interest or the discussion getting too heated and out of hand. it's discouraged people from making such threads in the first place, and as a result most of the threads in a forum tend to be skewed towards the direction of "hey look at this new tumblr/website/quiz/manga i found", besides the video game discussion threads.

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The main problem I can see is how exactly would moving debate threads to a new subforum stop topics from going downhill? We don't have too many serious discussions popping up as it is meaning the forum would probably be dead most of the time. Additionally, our a forum moderators will usually take care of any outstandingly troublesome posts in serious threads and giving them another forum to moderate sounds like an annoying added workload.

We actually used to do this with two forums, Firebot (the silly public forum) and Cong (don't post here if you're under three full paragraphs). But the mods decided that firebot was a cesspool of everything wrong with the internet and cong was a cesspool of everything wrong with an ivy league college (note i dont know the actual motives). long story short they merged them into a forum, and it's been working out. i dont see them getting separated back out any time soon.

While this vould work,I don't really see any advantages this has over the current system. Base your replies off of the tone set by the OP and note that moderator intervention may be necessary if you do not.

We've tried something like this before. Even if we were to block Deck Knight from this forum (which is technically simple), the fact remains that most of Smogon is unable to discuss serious matters to any substantial depth. While I would love to have some place to talk about politics and other subjects of gravity, it's just not feasible here.

"im great sage i go to mit im soooooooooooooooo smart"

i thought the gravity debate ended back in the 17th century