Sorry I'm late.
Traffic, Overcrowding
Firstly, I think that before Gonegold went away, traffic in both EBG and R&P was up from pre-split (and by that, I mean more political threads, repeats nothwithstanding, and more non politcal threads, ditto). Two of the main reasons to consider splitting a forum are 1) is that forum getting too much traffic and 2) will the sub forums justify being in existence?
I think the answer to both of those was a yes. I do not have any hard numbers to back up traffic in either forum - UBB didn't even keep them (and that's going on the eventual "things we'd like from the forum software list", but it isn't high priority). So, take my observations as you will.
If we think discussion of subject will be stimulated by the change in scenery, that's a very good thing. If we think things are too crowded in a single forum and splitting it up will benefit the subforums, that's a good thing.
I'll say that the number of triplicate (not to mention duplicate!, and Quad-shots weren't exactly an endangered species) threads was way on the rise. Part of it was this community's rather charming fascination with irony, sarcasm, and wit that manifested itself in thread titles (or failed to manifest itself
). And I wouldn't take that away for a second. But I think we kept growing, and that factor was being outpaced by the sheer volume of threads in EBG.
And I do think there was a problem with some snippiness at times spilling over into random threads, for seemingly no reason (I'm coming back to this, I'm sure some of you can't wait, oh yes).
Scale
One of the important issues for a community like ours is managing scale. People are attracted to, and become long time members of, communities for a vatriety of reasons. One is intimacy. As you get more people, you sacrifice intimacy. It behooves us then to find a way to fight that.
We could limit the number of people in the community. That's an easy and efficient approach, but not one I find effective. And that doesn't leave us with a hell of a whole lot. I think one way to combat scale is through forum setup. By dividing up broad areas of discussion into more concentrated topics, you can really help users focus on the things they want to discuss.
Of course, there are issues here. There's a tradeoff, and if you go too far, you're almost making people work to hard, and frankly you are going to make a mess of things ("oh look, I have 500 new messages in 300 forums today. Joy"). I know some of you like the cacophony of a united EBG. Frankly, that could easily work with the size we are right now (assuming for a moment that everyone registered suddenly wants to post here 20 times a day). I have *no* idea how big we are going to grow, either.
However, I think that as a community grows bigger, you're hurting more people than you are helping by keeping something like pre-split EBG alive. Now, I don't know what the real threshold for that situation is, but I do think we had crossed it.
Combating scale remains important. And we want to make it easy for people to avoid certain kinds of topics they don't want to read. To a degree. Of course, we don't have a scale issue right now, though I think there might be some sentiment on staff to try and hit the "sweet spot" with forum layout as best we can, just in case we get significantly bigger (wishful thinking, perhaps).
And this leads nicely into my next section:
Nuking a comfort zone & Putting up some partitions
Personally, I think Qt3 has a very attractive setup for "non gaming/PC" talk. Maybe you disagree (I see Kratz doesn't). In keeping with above, I think there are plenty of benefits.
Pushing aside the actual execution of the forum split, if Gonegold had been like that from the get go (that's EBG + R&P), would you really have a problem with the setup? Was the chaos of EBG something you came looking for? How much of it do you think was attributed to a pretty significant alteration in a daily routine that was not initiated willfully?
Also, yes, we've taken away that circus like feel of one particular locale. But we haven't taken away all the individual elements. It's a couple of extra clicks, depending on how you browse the forums (and if you do it in that freakish manner Smoove_B did, it's no extra clicks).
On cess-pools, mean people, and the road to hell
If you'd like, I'll begin composing poetry on how bad of a screwup the split was, speaking from an execution standpoint. We dropped the ball. Since my poetry isn't any good, it's for the best that I don't (but I will).
We did think temperature in EBG would drop a little when R&P moved out and got it's own apartment. And I think we were right (and I think that's a fairly easy assertion to make, and one that does
not speak poorly of the people who love the R&P talk) - but by no means was it pristine (nor did we expect that). We also thought there was a risk that R&P would be too hot. I think results were inconclusive. There were so many variables at work. I do think that is a testament to you guys in general (despite the occasional outbirsts and bad seeds).
I do hope we can put the nastier elements of the "for vs against the split" stuff behind us, and dispel the idea that some group or another is somehow deficient. You aren't, I love you all, let's move along.
On the choice of subject matter for R&P (that being the R & the P)
Bill made that decision, but it is an idea we wrangled with, and I think everyone continued to wrangle with in their heads. Finding the right sweetspot was/is difficult (include all general news postings? Just ones that weren't movie/sports/book/entertainment related? What about Science? Philosophy?).
R&P were chosen in part because they're fairly easy topics to judge in a thematic sense, I think. I'm not sure if, left alone, we'd have expanded the scope of the forum, or by how much. Or by how much we might do it now. There's plenty of philospohical discussion that seems to neatly fit in there, to be sure.
And lastly, it certainly is arguable that there are other topics that make better reading next to politics - so that's something else to think about.
EBG, post Split
I definately disagree it was "relegated to frivolty" (to borrow your words Ironrod, not trying to single you out; it is a sentiment we are familiar with). One man's frivol is another mans shizzle.
Ironrod, I do want to ask you a quesiton:
Why did it take "longer" to browse both forums separately than when they were together?
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Anyway, like a number of things, this isn't a done deal. We won't just change the name without reconsidering the scope of the forum, of course. So before asking for a name change, we should be asking for a scope change (though I think both name change requests were hinting at such).
Remember, we have to consider "modability", and it isn't just dealing with ornery posters (though that can be unpleasant). Nobody wants to have to make 20 judgement calls on where threads go, a day. Or even 10. 5 probably means we're not ideally setup (Excepting a situation where the community is getting a "feel" for a setup, like the one we have now, or new members are doing the same thing like the one we'll potentially get once we find a forum setup, and then someone new comes along after that).
BUTT