|
Well I guess I'm going to have to sit on the fence with this one. 
Personally I have nothing against the idea of a VIP forum - all the other forums that I'm a part of have a similar section, which allows trusted members (and that's the important word - trusted) to share files and to speak in confidence. It's the most effective way - particularly when you're handing out myplay details or something - to ensure that the people who you are talking to are completely trustworthy: that's why they're there. Now I'm not saying that the people who aren't in the VIP room are untrustworthy, because 99% of them are reliable members. But it's that other 1% - the James M's of this world - who you'd like to feel sheltered from, and they're the ones who spoil it for the rest of the members. Now that's not to say that the people in the VIP room are just going to hibernate in there and never come out - or at least I hope not. I know that I'll still be spending most of my time in either this forum or the music one, but it's still nice to know that there's that alternative there.
Having said that, I don't believe that the VIP room will solve any of the problems that we're talking about here, and like many have said before me, it could lead to elitism amongst those "VIP members" who are too immature to handle it properly.
I think that the best answer is to get rid of the VIP chill-out room, and then double the number of moderators in the "regular" chill-out room. I mean this place seems almost anarchic at times - sure the intro to the forum says "anything goes" but so many of the topics are either insanely pointless or potentially offensive. Now I'm not saying that we necessarily have to start "censoring" posts or anything, but, in my opinion, we do need some slightly more vigilant moderating. Whether it means introducing new moderators or just making the existing ones work harder, I think it needs to be done.
Of course, the other alternative to the VIP section (which was intended to allow veteran members - or whatever - to chat without the incovenience of spammers or pointless posts) is to split the Chill-out room into two different sections: one for serious posts of a general nature, the other for posting any old crap of a general nature - you get me? This way, the serious posts don't get infected with low-brow posts, and I guess it would work the other way as well (so that people are free to chat about anything in the "any other old crap" forum without fear of having some wanker like me telling them to stop posting useless stuff). I guess it would work kind've like the General/Party-Central sections do in HoM.
So anyway, cut a long story short, while I don't really disagree with the idea of the VIP room, I do think that there are better alternatives: namely introducing more moderators into this section or splitting it into two different parts to accomodate two different needs. Following either one of these two paths (or maybe even introducing both - splitting up the chill-out room and introducing more moderators) has the added bonus of allowing everyone to stay involved, regardless of how long they've been a member for, while (hopefully) maintaining the integrity of serious posts.
Anyway, I haven't really had time to think this through properly, so if you find anything wrong with my ideas then feel free to tell me - it'll save me from having to do it later on.
|
......Did you read the replies??
