Merging General and Off-Topic, or whatever they're called now
 

Because I don't know about you, but to me the idea of having two identical forums except in one you have a greater chance of being slightly "spammier" than the other and getting yelled at for it stopped being hilarious forever ago.

Honestly I've been thinking the same thing. Off Topic was originally meant for... well I'm not sure what exactly but what it is, is "General except shittier, except not really any shittier than General most of the time." Though I do like having a place where I can go into a thread and threadjack the fuck out of it in the name of Rex the Wonder Dog and not feel at all bad about that.

I think it's come up in the mod forum in the past but I'm blanking on what the consensus was about it; probably mainly inertia. Most of the issue could probably be made up by reworking our definition of "spam" to something like "If it's funny, it doesn't count as spam." Which would make moderation a bit more subjective but maybe that would be worth it (says the guy who gets to do the subjecting).

Ideally I'd like to have some sort of clearly stated unmistakeable definition for each forum such that nobody could under any circumstances be confused about it. As a working definition I tend to go with something like, "If you are okay with someone threadjacking this topic to talk about Rex the Wonder Dog, then it should go in Off-Topic," but I can appreciate as that's not quite as definite as people would prefer. But yeah if it's ultimately not possible to clearly distinguish the two then possibly it could just be easier to make them one thing.

and vice versa
 

Yeah, I think there could be a fair middle ground figured out with it. Not every thread necessarily deserves being taken wildly off course by some dog-themed spam attack, but at the same time it's kinda shitty to be officially told to get back on the topic of how much it sucks that it's raining at some guy's house.

You know, take it on a case-by-case basis, really.

In fairness that was actually a pretty good example of, theoretically, why we have a separate OT versus General, so that people who want to do a thread without having it veer off into random Iowa cracks can do that, whereas people who are totally down with threads veering off into random Iowa cracks have a thread that encourages that.

The problem is that nobody actually bothers to mind that distinction so we end up with everybody going into General and turning threads into all off-topic nonsense Iowa cracks and then people going into off-topic and posting threads where they flip a shit at you when you go off-topic. I'm half convinced you guys do it on purpose just to get on my nerves.

I've been saying we should merge them for years.

Suggestion - as a trial close Off Topic to new threads but leave posting on so we don't have to move the stickies in there / we retain the option of moving anything that gets posted in General which we deem sufficiently stupid?

However, I would like to note that when someone wants to have a serious conversation about the weather in their area of residence that they're begging to have their area of residence made fun of. It's not as bad about a thread dedicated to a lame cover of another equally lame 80s pop song, but still.

I dunno, that seems awfully complicated. On the other hand, I generally try not to start new threads if at all possible so whatever, go nuts.

The upside of fifth's idea is we'd all get a chance to finish up currently active threads, the downside is we'd have to wait a few weeks to really see what everything would be like without Off Topic. On the whole, I'd say let's do it but without moving any threads to Off Topic.

Yeah really I just wanted to see how many times I could fit the word Lackadaisy into a mod post.