I have a very hard time believing that these cases would have been any better without the local boards.
These were cases of people who were simply harassing their victims in every venue open to them. The fact that the local boards were one of those venues doesn't indicate that they cause problems; it just means that people who cause problems were willing to abuse them to do so that little bit more.
This is a good point.
Notably, forums make dirty laundry public. Whisper campaigns become known.
I would argue that we have Magistrate cases about the locals because the OOC community of BM is toxic in many cases and once we put even a little light on it we realized there was a lot of cleaning to do: I do not believe the locals caused it because, frankly, I recall a lot of hostility when I was new to the game. I don't think the game is really less friendly than it was several years ago. Retention issues aren't new; we've been having community issues for at least 3 or 4 years, but they were never pointed out because we didn't have a venue to make them explicit.
