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[feminazi]

-it would be considered serious discussion if it is anything beyond casual discussion of politic, religion, society, etc.

-anyone with access can make a thread there. hidden until level 1 to avoid spam or fake accounts.

-anything that goes beyond casual discussion of those topics in the main General forum would be split by a mod and become a serious discussion thread. (rule of thumb, when paul eres enters the thread)

-anything that becomes controversial in the General forum even if the topic might not be "serious" (ex superb joe twerking) would also be moved.

moderation would be different in serious discussion:
all "this debate is useless" derail posts are deleted.
all posts by moi are deleted, 100% of his posts are pointless.
dragonmaw is not allowed to close threads. (anyone else can)
all other moderation rules are relaxed (except spam and illegal things)

entering a "serious discussion" also means you acknowledge that you know you're getting into a Heated Internet Argument. so if you say something stupid without reading the thread, everyone is going to call you dum. this should be encouraged with the relaxed moderation, allowing the discussion to moderate itself (except the derails that would be deleted)

[MeshGearFox]

[feminazi]

that means he approvs

[Schoq]

it da best idea ever

[Kekskiller]

Yes, please. That would atleast enable one to quickly leave the whole discussion if it becomes more of an argument bouncing or something where it's not about just expressing one's opinion of gathering or so. Though I think this should sort combined with the other discussion thread ideas he wad with less account-specific rules but rather forum-specific rules of engagement (inevitable giving some sort of loose format how contributing an argument has to be).

[ThemsAllTook]

all "this debate is useless" derail posts are deleted.

Yes please! Those are one of the most frustrating things for me when serious discussions arise. Even if we don't get a dedicated Serious Discussions forum (which I think is a great idea), I'd love to see this rule applied to the existing threads in General and Games.

[ஒழுக்கின்மை (Paul Eres)]

a serious discussion on serious discusion

[Superb Joe]

i can't imagine what would impell a person to want to talk to the youtube comments guy and pompipompi about nothing but pressing issues but good luck in your quest

[Dragonmaw]

That's the general gist of what a Serious Discussions board would look like, yeah. Minus me not being able to close threads.

[Superb Joe]

tigsource's greatest minds: gimmy tilbert's french to english dictionary, the guy who thought human cloning would result in the birth of Adolf Hitler, a man who thinks a good use of his time is debating atheism on a youtube anime music video, and pompipompi, all come together to get brutally trolled by paul eres

[feminazi]

whos the cloner

That's the general gist of what a Serious Discussions board would look like, yeah. Minus me not being able to close threads.

thats the most important part of relaxd moderation. u gota relax

[oahda]

all non-general parts of the forums are already serious discussions (and no we don't need any serious discussions about things that are not related to gamedev because we don't have any other interests)

this thread is now locked

[Kekskiller]

I'm just glade you never became a mod.

[oahda]

[Code_Assassin]

Please make this happen.

[Geti]

Skomakar has an interesting point - the rest of the boards are already pretty "serious" in that there's minimal derail and most people know what they're talking about.
That said, a general interest serious discussions forum would be nice. I'm a little worried about the amount of trolling that would go on though. Any place for serious discussion on the web seems to attract that kind of thing en masse, and it's not trivial to moderate away due to people legitimately holding some pretty noxious opinions.

[Kekskiller]

Any place for serious discussion on the web seems to attract that kind of thing en masse, and it's not trivial to moderate away due to people legitimately holding some pretty noxious opinions.

And this is where the 100 posts whatever threshold comes in that mention in another thread with a similar goal. Topic-wise, discussions are about that, you know. Discussing things and opinions based on things and opinions though sorta filtered in time or at thread start.

[Geti]

That would be better I guess, would limit the number of trolls to a known few

[joseph ¯\_(ツ)_/¯]

Every board should be the serious discussion board. You don't get to fantasize about grand feminist conspiracies or whine about the topic being too serious in technical forums, you shouldn't get to in general either. General is only important to a game development community because it enriches it as people -- and that enrichment should be taken seriously, not shoved aside to a corner.

Keks all of the most toxic posters that I know of have more posts per day than the average member. Limiting serious discussion to posters who have contributed more incentives spamming and discourages joining the forum to offer wisdom, input, or experience. Post locked forums are a horrible idea if they're intended to be productive, they just encourage circle-jerk groupthink. A reader with 0 posts and relevant experience should be able to sign up and post -- what if we're talking about their article, or their game?

[Kekskiller]

True. I have 600+ posts and still spam like there's no tomorrow. I rather thought those times where just everyone comes and posts but meh. I could also disect the delicated process of forum optimization to some point where can't obviously bring anything good but not that's point right now. I see a specific difference between strictly topic-oriented subforums and general. General/games is hardly a place for serious discussion but then you got threads popping up and it becomes a serious discussion on it's own. It makes sense to keep the main general forum rather loose except for a dedicated place cause (as you mentioned) it enriches people to have both sides but it's contra productive to only have one.

It makes sense in this way. The most frequent threads are so random and not rarely useless in terms of discussion that it's important to not have strict rules everywhere to keep it comfy.