We launched the Quarantine Zone at the start of the pandemic, when the coronavirus was the chief topic of discussion. Now that the crisis has ebbed, QZ gets minimal traffic and the staff is debating what to do with it. We have no plans to delete QZ threads, but we might want to move them to one or more other forums - we’re investigating how much trouble this would be. Alternatively, we could just close QZ to new posts. (Covid questions could still be posted to other forums.) We’ll figure out the details later - the first step is to decide whether we should make any change at all. To help us figure this out, we encourage the Teeming Millions to vote in the poll below, and elaborate on your opinion in this thread. The poll is advisory but if there’s a clear preference we want to know about it. Thanks!
You want to start a new pandemic? Because this is how you do it. Guaranteed, the day after you close it, there will be some new one announced.
Seriously, I don’t much care between leaving it as-is and closing it to new posts. But I do think removing it entirely and moving threads elsewhere would be a mistake. Beyond all the effort deciding where each thread sits, I think it’s an interesting time capsule of what we were discussing during that time.
Would it maybe be a good idea to repurpose it as a health/illness related forum? Seems like as we age, we’re seeing more and more threads like that anyway.
Seconding that. Also, doing that would leave it easily re-openable if needed in the future; possibly re-naming it to include whatever’s up next, unless we decided to start a separate forum for that.
We certainly would need, as the OP suggested, current threads in other forums; because, as has been noted, this thing is still around and isn’t going away.
At a glance, the forum still seems relatively active. No reason to close it while it’s still in use, unless there’s a feeling that its existence is a strain on the mod staff and life would be easier for them if we rolled its activity into the other fora.
I never visit that particular forum, so I’m generally ambivalent about it. But I think that moving the threads to other forums would be confusing and ruin the cohesiveness of the QZ.
Although we probably enough threads for it, I don’t really want to be known as a message board with a dedicated forum for everyone’s health issues. I prefer having them in with other IMHO.
We won’t have another pandemic soon, but I think we need to brace for the Pandamic, where black and white bears from China run rampant through our cities, seeking blood and bamboo.
…In all seriousness though, hopefully there will never be another need for the QZ again.
