[MissMisa]

Originally Posted by Koir

You have good ideas in the rest of the post except for this part. If it does get implemented, it will immediately separate the active members into "the elite" and "the plebians". Sure, the chosen few established members will have a private area to discuss matters that are important to them, but the rest of the forum will still be subject to the same name-calling and threads going down in flames for the usual reasons in addition to calls of "elitism" annd favoured opinions.

At worst, it will change the forums into a large group of the "lower class" of posters constantly railing against the "higher class" who have access to an exclusive forum area where they can discuss things among themselves to much agreement and derision against those who cannot respond in kind because they are not "favoured" enough to do so.

The thing is, the problem with serious discussion at the moment in other topics is like lack of maturity. I really don't think the whole or JF will be seperated just because of one topic. If people really want to get into the section - it's fine, all they have to do is earn it. I think it could be seen as a reward for the members who take the time to post in a responsible manner and a deterant for people who just like to stir up trouble. It wouldn't be exclusive, anyone would be able to get into it eventually, if they earn the right to, and everybody has the same scope to earn their way into the topic.

Originally Posted by Tyrien

The problem with wanting forums like this is utter ignorance and intollerance for the way other people present their opinions. It's asking people, despite having or not having intelligence, to act and convey their thoughts in a certain way.

The only way a forum like this is to have a mod, or mod team for it, that can actually be impartial and deem if someone is debating seriously or not.

Ex of what would generally be considered bad due to ignorance, or refusal to understand:

Improper punctuation
Improper grammar
Poor spelling
A Metaphore, Simile, Hyperbole, or reference that isn't "clean" enough, despite it conveying the point perfectly.

As you can see, little things like that that are often misinterpreted as lack intelligence or maturity that cause problems in this type of forum. Providing there isn't proper moderation.

Yeah, as I already said, this section would need to be heavily moderated, and while not something that can be put in place immediatly, the site is being redesigned according to Shinjuku and I know that Kanji forwarded peoples concerned about the lack of moderators to him, so hopefully changes to the moderators will come about and perhaps make this possible. For know, I know it isn't.

Oh, and the other forum with Serious Discussion it has a Sticky outlining the rules on grammar and punctuation, and that it will not be tolerated.

I really think JF is being too soft on these kind of issues and probably needs to clamp down harder because I know people want to talk about controversial subjects and being banned from talking about Religion is something that could be changed if we had this thread.

Originally Posted by rina26

A forum I used to frequent had a serious discussion area and none of this elite hating thing ever happened. But the restrictions were 100 posts and been a member for more than a week. And even if you didn't meet the criteria you could still read the threads, just not join in.

ETA: I think 1000 is too steep. It would personally take me 6-12 months to reach that high only because I read more than I interact. Took me forever to just make an account here.

The forum I'm on allows you to post from the get-go. It is modded well, and the whole forum is about 3 times the size of this one - they rarely ever have problems. The people who'd normally post stupid stuff are probably intimidated by the complicated language in that forum. But the reason why I proposed 1000 posts is because the age range of this forum is a lot less than the other forum in which they have serious discussions. We have had serious dicussions before, and they are ruined by immature [and sometimes new,] members, which spoils it for the people who do actually want to discuss things properly.