I dunno Valka, maybe you can take some guesses. It seemed entirely on point to me.
The guess I would take is that your post is a snide reference to my defense of the DYOS artists. I'm not one of them, by the way. I enjoy reading their work, but I'm not creative enough to participate.
It's a pretty simple and straightforward question. The only legitimate argument for keeping A&E around is because of DYOS. The argument, of course, is that DYOS would sink to the bottom of OT because only a small subset of people participate in it, and keeping it in a smaller subforum would help it stay present and visible. Of course the only reason you do that is to attract new users who don't know about DYOS - as regulars of the thread would just have it on notifications or would dig around to find it by other means (or maybe even have it bookmarked) - so the question stands, does keeping DYOS in A&E actually help the thread in any demonstrable way - namely, does it attract any new posters who weren't personally referred there by another regular.
DYOS is NOT the only reason to keep A&E around. You might want to read my sig; there's a writing competition starting this week - one that would be an absolute
nightmare to manage in OT. Sure, there would be more readers... but unless you can convince me there would be ZERO flames/trolls during the critiquing phase, plus NONE of the relevant threads sinking off the front page - that's
three threads per competition - and I can pretty much predict the lack of positive response if I asked the OT mods to sticky all 3 of these, every time... I just can't see how that would work. These writing challenges are one of the major reasons I lobbied so hard for A&E for such a long time.
I think the theory is that it keeps out the trolls by being sheltered in A&E - though an RD in OT should do that.
A&E has seen its share of trolls over the years, but things have settled down a great deal. Those of us left are having fun, so I don't see the problem. Granted, some of the discussion threads could work in OT - but personally I'm rather glad I don't have to go hunting a ridiculous number of pages to find them.
Show me a RD thread in OT that goes for many pages and receives NOT ONE warning or infraction. The RD helps some, but it's not a magical protective talisman that works all the time. It would be an utter shame if any of the stories or webcomics were disrupted because somebody decided to test that for threads that were
not the usual kind of discussions.
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