This whole discussion needs to be restarted so there is an 'ok' proposal by the time Tom returns.
Some people want the forums shut down completely, others want the locals returned completely.
Compromise people. I'm sure we can do it, heck, even Belgium got a government after almost two years without.
It must be somewhere in between.
First of all, there are a number of people who believe that the original concerns were vastly overblown, and the closing of the locals was a knee-jerk overreaction. For them, asking that things go back to exactly the way they were is far from unreasonable.
Second of all, I think it's optimistic to think that we can come up with any one proposal that everyone involved will, in fact, agree to support. When you've got people saying in all seriousness that we should close the forums down, do you really think they'll be willing to support the same proposals as people who think the forums have been a great boon to the game, and that closing them down would be a huge loss?
Third of all, I don't believe that anyone
is, in fact, asking that things go back to exactly the way they were. From what I've seen,
everyone who wants the Locals to reopen agrees that they should do so with considerably stricter moderation and clearer guidelines for both players and moderators.
So, there's my proposal: Put together some solid, common-sense guidelines for what's considered acceptable, and make it clear that anything that deviates from them will be ruthlessly deleted, and the offending poster given an official warning. Then, reopen the Local boards, and see how things go. Give it a trial period of a few months, at least. The game has survived this long with the allegedly terrible, awful forums; a few months with a significantly less lawless Locals section is certainly not going to kill it, even if the worst of the accusations here are true. At the end of that time, evaluate whether the boards seem to be causing undue trouble, and if not, let them stay. If they are, then we will need to work out something else to do with them.
