- x Foman123 x
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- Master Forum Ninja
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I think that "join a group" is as far as the idea has gone because that is the answer to your question. I fail to see why there should be a publicly moderated forum only for certain members who gain some completely irrelevant status like length of membership. Some of the oldest members of this site are some of its worst and most destructive. You think the guy who stole a moderator account and deleted all those threads a couple of months ago was a new member?
Even if you ignored length-of-membership and had a restricted-access special forum using some non-objective qualifier such as quality of posting, it would, nearly automatically, be both under- and over-inclusive. Members who post seldomly but very intelligently would be excluded because nobody knew them (underinclusive), while members who arguably should not be accorded any special privileges may be granted access due to knowing somebody with the power to admit them (overinclusive). This over- and under-inclusiveness is fine in many other situations where even with the over- and under-inclusiveness, you are still giving newer members good examples (perhaps even role models, in some way) to follow. But a special forum removes those good examples and places them in their own area, leaving behind the dregs of the forum to establish and continue forum culture.
I have still never seen anybody state an issue or problem that would be a good reason for a "restricted access" forum that couldn't be solved through less restrictive means. If you want to encourage new members to be better posters, the more reasonable solution is to have something along the lines of the much-debated "Veteran Member" status that allows members to do things like use the rumored "Report Thread" button.
In the end, the only thing that a special public forum amounts to is some kind of status symbol that says "I've graduated from hanging out with you fools and moving on to bigger and better things." That kind of sentiment is fine when you're talking about unofficial private groups because, in some cases, the sentiment is wholly true. But any label or privilege accorded to a member in a public, official or semi-official way (such as moderator or "veteran member" status) should lead to and encourage MORE interaction in the public forums, rather than LESS. Once the "good members" are no longer encouraged to participate in the public forums, you will see the gap between the mess in the Halo 3 Forum and what we consider to be civilized discussion increase even further.
[Edited on 10.03.2007 5:54 PM PDT]