Eh I keep flip-flopping on the subject.

There wasn't anything inherently wrong with having Discussion Forum but it more or less turned into Debate Forum, and any stance taken was going to be picked apart and needled. People who generally enjoyed debates went in whereas all others stayed out, and only the real hiccups were when newcomers came in, posted in Discussion, and got offended at the enthusiasm at which people would take apart their stance, IE, Frogman, bless his heart.

Really on one hand maybe it was a necessary evil but on the other shouldn't the thread determine its own level of seriousness/debatedness?

So maybe a system like so...

Off-Topic: Anvils falling from the sky, silly.
General: "Oh, can you believe he doesn't like mustard?", silly
Discussion: This is somewhat of an important topic, serious.
Debate: Flaming anvils thrown at your head, serious.

is kind of what some people want for clarification purposes, but it requires extra work on the admins' part.

I'm thinking, less as an admin and mostly as a regular forum user, that maybe not every possible variation of what people can do on a forum requires its own label for the very same people to know what it is.

e: vvv especially since General did get stagnant as all hell when we had a three-way split because I guess people were afraid of getting banned if they cracked jokes in General and so went to OT instead? Or something like that.

That probably splits the topics up too much. Each section would appear stagnant.

It was less that General was stagnant than that General was exactly the same thing as Off-Topic / Off-Topic was exactly the same thing as General and nobody including myself had any clue how in the hell to enforce any kind of meaningful distinction.

I just figure I'd throw this into the ring. This is one of those eternal internet arguments that gets no where fast. Unfortunately, Discussion forums almost always come down to strict areas that can tend to flaming or heated debate. General forums are silly, mixing the two comes up with mixed results, usually meaning a melding of the two.

Personally I think the mixed 'and set your own tone' works just fine. I think it's nice that an area is presented for people to discuss politics and other serious things. Even if it's in the General/off-topic chat. I don't personally see a problem.


EDIT

Just do a Rules thread in the General topic that explains certain threads are in the above categories and the Original Poster sets the tone... so follow along. And then loosely enforce the following along, or ask people to be on topic. Let the forum members police themselves and crack down on flaming and other abuses. Seems simple to me. And it'd keep the place busy

Just tosay I'd quite like the discussion forum back because I've felt that any serious topics that have come up since the close, the first page of responses has just been jokes and nobody has been able to discuss anything.
Though I'm also torn because the jokes are often funny and a good read, I just feel that easily drown out any discussion because they so much faster to make than proper discussion.
I'm not sure how well letting the original user set the tone would go because there is so much room for interpretation.

I usually don't care to participate in politics, religion, etc. on the Internet.
 

I hated the discussion forum for a long time and am happy that it is gone. :)

Shit, now it's got to go back.