I have a feeling this is going to fall onto totally deaf ears, but these are my thoughts on what needs to happen to this place going forward. I'm completely staying away from the human side of this situation, and simply talking about the forum itself.
There needs to be way more transparency, and way more communication. There needs to be an official stickies thread for questions/comments/complaints about the board, and there needed to be one years ago. If pride needs to be swallowed, then swallow it. There's been too much silencing of people's attempts to try to talk about what's going on around here, and this should be a simple concept, but the opinions of the customers should actually be listened to. Make one centralized thread for it, and don't punish people for saying things the management might not want to hear.
The community has to be welcoming to everyone outside of the extreme elements. Yes, that means conservatives, and republicans, and Trump supporters, and so on. I've seen tons of comments about how people love(d) GAF for being welcoming to women and minoritiesand that's been a very important thing that shouldn't ever be given up. However, it can be welcoming to everyone else as well (again, outside of the extreme). The rule should be that people should be civil to one another, and if they are, then let them be here. It got to a point where conversations became the enemy here, and then not so long ago it became that moderates were the new enemy, and promised to soon be that the "not left enough" would be the new enemy. Stop letting any particular groups dictate the conversation on here, and stop the dog piling that occurs due to "wrongthink". Also, no more protected members. It's been clear that certain posters have been "favorites" of the mods and been allowed to get away with a whole lot more than other users could. Cut that shit out.
Cut it out with the passive aggressive mods. Stop with the shit user tags, stop with the smarmy ban messages. It got to the point where mods because like emperors flaunting their power from high above the peons, and that's unacceptable. However, shadow mods are not the answer. Modbot is bullshit, and threads should never be closed with smart quips from a faceless entity. If Modbot needs to be used, then have the balls to sign the name of who used it in that instance. Also, mods should not be decided when the conversation in a thread is "done" outside of obvious circumstances. Tons of great discussions in threads have been prematurely killed just because some mod didn't personally find it worthwhile. And for god's sake, don't allow any more deification of modsa situation like Bish should never, ever happen again.
Have a clear and fleshed out list of rules, and if someone does something that's not on the rules list, don't ban them for it. That's bullshit. It's been impossible at times to know what would and wouldn't get you banned around here unless you happened to see a thread where a new rule was announced. And, again, ban messages should actually be clear about why the person was banned and what they did wrong, and not the chance for a mod to act like they're an action hero using a one-liner before taking out a bad guy.
Make the forums fun again. Have clear differences in expectations between official threads and casual ones. I totally think that OTs should be free from derailment and (unjustified) nonsense and trolling and all of that, but easy up a little bit in other threads. Let people be silly sometimes. Let the jokes happen, and require that people not be so thin-skinned that even the most innocent of joking around is blow up into some offense. Bring back those couple of smilies that existed years ago. Let threads like "Hot Men/Women" exist again so long as boundaries aren't pushed too far. Don't just paint over the entire forum with the exact same expectations for every single thread. And make "if you don't like the thread, don't read it" an expected part of using GAF. Having certain people shit up threads just because they don't like the subject has gotten out of control. Every thread doesn't have to be for everyone.
Speaking on that, keep politics out of most threads. Allow for threads to specifically focus on and discuss the politics of games or developers or publishers or genres or whateverthat should absolutely existbut keep the politics out of threads where they don't belong. I understand people might not like the dev/narrative behind The Last Night or the fact that JonTron was in Hat in Time, but that conversation has no place in most threads about both of those games.
Getting rid of Off Topic is messy. At the very least, it should exist but be locked from any further posting. There's a lot lot of threads in there that were important to a lot of people, and just taking that all away from everyone isn't the right thing to do. Also, the policy of completely scrubbing certain conversations or topics instead of dealing with them head-on is something that absolutely needs to stop, but I have zero faith ever would.
Finally, banning anyone today other than those who directly ask to be permabanned is really, really not a good look. If NeoGAF is to survive, it'll settle downbut the venting that's happening today needs to happen, and needs to be allowed.
Those are my thoughts as someone who isn't sure if this is a place I can still support or not. Butagain, personal human aspects asideI think there is a chance to put changes in place that can make this place change for the better going forward for those who do stick around, and those who join in the coming days.
