I've done compliance stuff IRL. The absolute last thing I want is copy that into a !@#$ing GAME.
The day this game has a rule for everything is the day I'll walk away from it. Have all of you forgotten the Social Contract you signed? Play as you would with a bunch of friends. Do you make rules for your friends? No, of course not. You establish a very small number of ground rules for the most important things like "no smoking in my house" and leave everything else to sort itself out because amongst friends you don't need to write a law book. The law is not written for friends, it is written for enemies. When you are in a competitive or hostile environment, that is when you need a hundred rules.
I personally think that the rule "don't be an !@#$%^&" is all we need and every ruling we've ever made can be derived from it. The more detailed rules we do have in the IRs and Social Contract just specify what "!@#$%^&" means in a bit more detail.
If the Locals needed explicit rules about what postings were ok and which ones not, then shutting them (they are not deleted, btw., just inaccessible) was the right thing to do, because they stopped being friendspace.
You said that main reason for locals to be shut down was that it was too much IC. Well, make a rule that forum is strictly OOC and DONE! I don't want to see tens of rules, who would bother reading them?
Basic guidelines are needed. If people are not limited, then they tend to touch the boundaries and thus shift the boundaries even further.
People see that other people discuss IC in IRC. Mostly just commenting on IC happenings and voicing their opinion. Not making IC decisions or anything else that would be needed to those who are not on IRC. Then people came to forums and continued, but at some point they went too far. Why? Because there were no guidelines! On IRC if people go too far, then there are other people to tell them that dude, thats not okay.
People are used to have some set of guidelines in forums, because based on what would you report a post if there are no guidelines set other than vulgarity and social contract?
