I begrudgingly voted Yes because technically I do support the creation of a board that separates fanfics from games. They are indeed fundamentally different organisms and deserve to be classified as such. But you guys are supporting it for completely wrong reasons to solve a completely wrong problem.
Moving "user created material" out of General Chat won't magically create "general" discussions. You make it sound like the other threads in General were either distracting members and making them waste their "posting time" writing there and not elsewhere (which especially makes no sense because we're talking just intra-General) or that the other threads were "clogging up" and somehow obscuring people from physically finding the "chatting" threads of General. I don't know what view of the intelligence or laziness you have of our users, but I have faith that every one of them can find the type of thread they want in General Chat, no matter how mixed with "fan creations" threads. Nay, the reason there aren't many "general chats" is twofold, one natural and one unnatural.
Naturally, people are sort of afraid to make a new topic. I've noticed this from the very beginning, ever since I started posting. Many of the best members I've ever seen virtually never created a thread. They responded frequently and wonderfully to almost every thread, but most of these threads were random creations of n00bs. Just as the great whales need plankton to eat, the forum heavy hitters required a tiny insignificant member to come by and, without inhibition, create a thread for them to post in. If you look at current trends, we see two things. First, most of the threads sitting around right now were actually created by whales and not plankton. Second, there are a lot less of them. This is because in its eight or so years, the Fungi Forums has both matured (average age of "regulars") and become a lot more hostile toward plankton-type people. One of my favorite guys from the old days was named Marionut#1, a plankton for sure. He was cool, funny, and had a bunch of interesting things to say. His posts always had a lot of mistakes, though, and he liked to play around in "roleplaying" threads. He would have been ripped to shreds in today's environment, never showing any of his true potential. It's hard for young plankton to stick around because they find less regulars to talk to about things at their age level, because we mock their stupid theories of the Mario universe, because we mercilessly warn and whine about every typo and forum faux pas they make, because we chastise their inability to understand our esoteric jokes, because we slap them with cruel custom titles within days of their joining. If they do miraculously manage to stay, they are driven to stories and to games, because it's the only thing that feels comfortable and, God forbid, fun! No one makes fun of their typing there either! And whether they leave or go to the games, they definitely aren't creating discussion topics for us whales.
Unnaturally, there are a lot less "general chats" than in the Good Old Days because ANGST and HOPEFUL absorb tons of discussions. Events that someone previously would have created a thread about instead go to one of these places if the event is bad or good. That covers a lot of events! So instead of lots of various Topics Where It Is Worthwile To Post, we have two über-threads with triple digit page counts. There are two problems with this. First, we have a small number of "general chat" threads, and this is what you people are seeing and crying about (also helped by the natural reason above). Second, and the much more subtle and insidious of the problems, whenever a "general chat" of a single topic starts to occur in ANGST or HOPEFUL, either someone happens to bring up a completely unrelated ANGST or HOPEFUL event and changes the discussion (which destroys the old one because they are in the same thread) or someone (often thread-creator Bird Person) comes in and says, "You guys need to stop this general chatting in my thread where you're supposed to just name random bad events that happened to you." which really illustrates why ANGST and HOPEFUL are just as pointless and random as, well, The Pointless Topic! They absorb and destroy general chats. Not even Pointless does that.
And speaking of Pointless, let's talk about post counts. People here are dredging up convoluted philosophical inquiries into the Essence of Posts, whether a single word or picture can achieve the lauded designation of Full Post. People here lie awake at night, clutching tightly their bedsheets as they seethe - seethe! - over GiftedGirl's post-by-board percentage and gnash furiously their teeth - gnash! - at the idea that their thoughtful 500-word essay on Middle School Graduation earned them the same amount of Awesomeness (also known as +1 to a number) as one sentence, Added To The Story. Pause now, pause and remember that We The People last Christmas voted a solitary picture as Post of the Year, voted a thread that chews up and spits out general chat as Topic of the Year, voted a message that reminded us to Be Ourselves as Best Signature when now we take away people's posts for posting where they want to. Our Best Custom Title served nothing but to degrade a member. Our Cleverest Poster can't even think of a good joke to put here.
Indignant people! I say to thee! Look at yourself. This is ridiculous. Carving out boards where posts Do Not Count!? Have you lost the true meaning of what foruming is all about? It's not about caring that people get high numbers. That's what MMOs are for. It's not about punishing people for finding different styles of threads fun. That's what religion is for. It's not about who has the longest post. That's what sex is for.
It's about posting words that others will find fun to read, reading words that others found fun to post, hanging out with your friends, and making new ones too. It's not about our numbers, it's about our hearts.
Let's eliminate post counts from the board completely. They serve no purpose and only drive us apart. Who's with me?
Poll
