I’ve been wondering what the problem was, and I think it may be that we’re imagining different things.
I suspect that Ron is thinking more of what Skald is calling ‘Public Forums’ or ‘Public Discussions’. Sure, if your Discussion is open to all site members, there have to be restrictions both about the content and who runs it. But then, what we have already seems to work for that (if we publicize the option a little more). I don’t really see the requirement to differentiate between ‘Public Discussion’ and ‘Public Forum’.
What I was imagining was what Skald calls ‘Private Discussions’, and to be honest, that’s all that really interests me - Discussion Games, if you like.
I don’t see any reason why Moderators need concern themselves with the contents of a Private Discussion. It doesn’t matter if there are twenty Discussions about D&D Character Classes - just as it doesn’t matter if there are twenty or two hundred games of Shadowrun. Punters join what they find interesting. (But you could restrict them to ‘RPG related’ to save server space from Cars and Dogs).
My difficulty is that GMs can’t label their game as a ‘Discussion Game’, except by Game System (which pretty much excludes them from listing what the discussion is about). Nor can anyone find it easily, making the requirement that:
quote:
The GMs have to operate their forum as a regular game for a while as a sort of "proof of concept".
Difficult to implement.
In all probability, too many discussions die too quickly because they can’t be listed readily and can’t be found easily.
What we need is:
a)
An option for GMs to freely list their ‘game’ under the Discussion Genre, in exactly the same way that they list it as Fantasy and/or Comedy, then they can list the nature of the discussion under Game System, and people can find it easily just by choosing the Discussion Genre on the search screen.
and
b)
There needs to be a flag somewhere that tells the GM that if the discussion generates sufficient interest over a sufficient time, s/he can apply to the Mods to have the Game turned into a Forum, with public access and greater responsibility. Such a GM effectively becomes a mini-moderator with responsibility for management and first-line moderation of his/her own Public Forum, and will need to be vetted carefully by the Mods.
Item a) will allow for more Private Discussion Games and for those discussions to be found and joined more easily. It will also keep them more in one place and hence make it easier to moderate them for RPG relevance, etc.
Item b) will ensure that only suitable GMs and topics will be allowed into the public arena, retaining the status quo, but that GMs will be more aware of the option to ‘go public’, so that more really useful material supplied by reliable people becomes publicly available.
Win-win, I reckon. :)