Ah jeez, I get post ninja'd, but not often do I get thread ninja'd!
Yes, I think it's a very poor idea. I'll post this little thing I said in one of the Wild West threads and elaborate on it further:
I feel like because things are going downhill slowly and mods are leaving (Possibly because of this new forum), this is simply a way of going "FUCK IT, do whatever you crazy people want! Just don't hold us responsible" and that comes off as a pretty bad idea. It's allowing things to go haywire without any regard to the rules that this site has so strictly upheld, which will probably only increase the rate in which it dies.
It'll increase post/thread creation and maybe a bit of traffic, but at what cost? This will just let trolls and rule breakers walk all over everything and everyone, and without mod enforcement, it'll probably drive people away faster. I hope they re-consider. Maybe I'm entirely wrong and am being pessimistic and it'll turn out to be a blast, who knows. I'm simply nervous about it all
I don't feel like there's a lot of pros here. It's fun to just have some BS with threads that have less rules, but pretty much having none besides the illegal stuff might not be the best way of going about it. No moderation support on these threads also sounds extremely sketchy.
My biggest problem is that it comes off as a "We don't care. Go be crazy and be a pain in the ass and shitpost all you want. Here's the place to do it" when The Escapist has been all about enforcing its rules firmly. While that may be a bother to some which could very well be why this sub-forum was made, these rules and the level they're enforced is why The Escapist isn't as much of a crap shoot as other forums. But looking at the mod list, half of our mods seem to have poofed away from us all of a sudden. I can't imagine why, and I can't help but wonder if the Wild West was either why they left, or a byproduct of them leaving.
Is this really what's best for The Escapist in this situation it's in? I wouldn't say so. Things are already slowly falling apart, so why create a sub-forum that could potentially speed up the process? Stuff like harassment, calling out users, insults, bigotry, slandering... All of these things seem like they could be a big issue in the Wild West. If this is indeed the case, why the fuck would anyone wanna be hanging around here anymore when there could be a big ol circle jerk of people making efforts to ruin people's reputations
completely un-moderated?
This is gonna go to hell fast. It's a silly little idea now that it's fresh and people can dick around with it. But once the layer of fun settles down, all that it's gonna become is a pure shit-posting war, and could potentially be worse than R&P if mis-handled. And considering the CoC and reports are disregarded in the Wild West... I have no reason to believe otherwise.
This isn't like The Escapist at all