I agree 100% with Stabbity.
The problem with the premise of this thread is that it starts out with an unsupported supposition, that the forum is actively harming the game. Like Stabbity, I see no evidence of that at all. In fact I tend to believe the opposite (though I have no more evidence to support my position than Tom does), that the forum is a net positive. Tom, after arbitrarily shutting down most of the forum in what I consider to be a significant overreaction, has now challenged us to come up with ways to solve problems that for the most part we either don't believe exist or don't consider to be nearly as apocalyptic as the title of this thread would suggest, just so we can get our forum back.
I cannot fix what is not broken, nor can I make much in the way of meaningful suggestions to solve problems that I do not perceive. The decline of interaction in the game has a million possible causes, but first and foremost I would blame the historically low player density, not the existence of the forum. The solution, which is already being considered elsewhere, is shutting down islands. As far as the atmosphere of the forum, it really is not that bad. People gripe, they complain, they argue. This is not bad in and of itself, and moreover it's human nature. When it comes to the problem of real personal attacks and flames (which are far from frequent in this community, making what incidents do occur stand out all the more), more stringent moderation could easily mitigate what does occur.
Compared to most internet communities, this one is a model of comity. People here are civil to each other 99% of the time, even when they're disagreeing vehemently about something. Conflict, in and of itself, is not the problem; it's only when actual insults are getting tossed around and people's feelings are actually getting hurt that there is a problem, and I don't think that happens every day here. Has it happened? Yes. Can the problem be 100% eliminated? Of course not. Can it be managed and mitigated without completely destroying the forum? Absolutely yes it can. I think stricter moderation would solve the only issue that I do agree exists, which is that sometimes disagreements turn nasty. Hell, if you want a perfect forum, just prevent posts from appearing until they've been approved by a mod. As I mentioned, I know of one site that does exactly that.
Tom, you think the forum is harming the game. Fine. I think that what you've done here is harming the game. It will certainly have a negative impact on my experience.
