I like Giraffe’s Box over at the Giraffe Boards.
No, you know what this place really needs? An introduction forum. Almost every message board I visit, there is a place for new members to introduce themselves and say “hi”. This is one of the only message boards that doesn’t have that.
I think a “Humans:How Do They Work?” forum would be good for all the threads where posters just don’t get stuff that the majority of people intrinsically understand (often to do with dating or social norms).
I could go for a photo forum too.
The one I’d really like to see would be a history forum. It could include threads discussing historical figures, customs, wars and genealogy.
This could also be the place for “what if in history had gone differently” threads.
Similar to this, I’d like a forum for only serious replies.
Personally, I’d like to see “Computer and Board Games” separated out from “Sports” and “Forum Games”.
To my mind the concepts are very different and it’s disjointed having threads about Baseball, Cricket, World of Warcraft and Risk all in the one forum.
I’d like a current events forum for discussing news. When I hear about a major news story, I often come to the SDMB to see if there’s a thread about it. The way it is now, there’s frequently multiple threads (each in a different forum) for the same event, so it’d be nice to have them all together. Entertainment news and sports news could probably stay in Cafe Society and The Game Room, respectively, though. I imagine this hypothetical forum as being for general interest news.
Right there with you buddy.
We get a ton of nut jobs, woo fanatics, conspiracy freaks, wildly fantastical theories on just about any cosmic thing, delusional ranting and other misc. crack pottery.
I can’t express the how delightful it is to poke those lost in the head, who come here to vomit their convicted notions all over our boards, and see what they say next. It’s like an interactive Oliver Sacks book, where you can stimulate the delusional to get a better glimpse on their impossible understanding of the world. For posterity and the noble cause of scientific inquiry, of course.
And because it’s so much fun.
Pretty please can we have this forum? It’d also have the added benefit to weed the whackos from the other foura, and a beautiful pool of myriad bullshit, debunked by those who find sport in such things.
But to keep the name of such a forum in line with the rest, it’d have to have a more agreeable name, like **The Soap Box **or something.
Video Games, instead of being lumped into The Game Room.
A Real Great Debates Forum. The way it would work is there would be a list of volunteer referees maintained a sticky in ATMB. These may be mods, but they don’t have to be. These referees would be the only people with posting privileges to the debate forum. If you want to start a thread you would PM all the refs. If three or more are interested in refereeing your thread it would be a go. People who wanted to post in the debate would send their posts as a PM to the refs (Who would agree not to post in the thread themselves.) The refs would review the post, and accept it, reject it unconditionally (with explanation), or reject it but with a possible acceptance if the poster changes things–ie makes their reply less snarky, clarifies some possible point of confusion, etc. The refs would work on majority rule, so no one ref could reject a post. If the post is accepted the ref posts it with the name of the actual writer in the post title or body. It would have to be a separate forum as debates would move very slowly.
Note: acceptable posts would not have to be long learned treatises–which few people here would be qualified to give anyway. They would just have to be fresh, non-insulting (really, not in that “it’s ok to insult by implication or by calling the post rather than the poster stupid” fashion that we have now in GD), and contribute something. Single sentence questions would be fine, if they were real questions. Hell even jokes would be OK if they were original and actually funny.
With this forum, regular GD could be allowed to operate under pit rules, which would be infinitely better than the “I’m not touching you, I’m not touching you” situation that now prevails.
Do “Sports” and put video games back in Cafe Society.
Yeah that’s a great idea Drew!
So thaaaaat’s why they call you “drewtwo”!
Actually, despite there being a GQ, and other places to discuss science and technology, I’d love a dedicated forum for that.
It’s such a vast domain of subjects in line with the SDMB’s creed, and we have so many members not only interesting in discussing these things, but very qualified professionals and scientists as members.
A Science, Math & Philosophy forum would be a great way to consolidate and mine some great discussions and knowledge. Not everything there, by its very nature, has a factual answer, or is always a debate, either. Sometimes you’d just like to discuss them out of interest.
An Abandon All Hope Forum, where threads that have already died are mercifully put to sleep.
Ya beat me to it, cmyk. A science forum is exactly what this board needs.
Q and A. We have many brilliant scientists here and this would give them (And Us) our own forum.
Something I have long dreamed of, on this board or any other, is a strictly-moderated forum entitled Answer the Question or Fuck Off.
This forum would be for GQ-style factual questions, but the only responses allowed are honest attempts to answer the question as asked. No jokes, no WAGs, no LMGTFYs, no links to nonspecific sources, and — most importantly by far — no sanctimonious, self-congratulatory declarations that the thread’s OP is somehow wrong for having asked the question in the first place. Requests for clarification are allowed, but only in the context of the original question. Editorial commentary is allowed if and only if the post begins with a substantive response.
Should a poster not wish to answer any particular question — they feel the OP is asking too much, is taking a wrongheaded approach, doesn’t understand the information they’re asking for, etc. — that poster is perfectly free within the rules of the forum to simply fuck off. Either the thread will sink like a rock, or else the OP will bear the consequences of his or her own stupidity and learn to ask better questions, either result being preferable to the scads of unhelpful self-superior posturing that comprises 90+ percent of most forums’ responses, especially (but by no means limited to) technical questions.
Consider this example question: In Whizbang Video Editor 3.6, how do I convert from AVI to MP4?
Ideal response: Open the AVI, then in the File menu, click Export. In the dialog that pops up, select MP4 in the file type dropdown, then press OK.
Acceptable response: File > Export > MP4, but I find that Fizzbin Editor gives higher quality conversions. You might consider using that instead.
Acceptable response: Are you using the Windows or Mac version? I use keyboard shortcuts and they’re different between the two.
No: Everyone knows Fizzbin is better at this than Whizbang. Here’s how to do it in Fizzbin. I’m helpful!
No: Here’s a PDF download of the Whizbang documentation. It’s 196 pages so I’m sure the answer is in there somewhere. I’m helpful!
No: Here’s a link to the Google results for “Whizbang AVI MP4”, which contain step-by-step instructions for how to do this in the 1.2 version from 2003, and sixteen recent forum threads asking the same question and getting linked to that irrelevant document by helpful folks like me.
No: What is the specific reason you’re using Whizbang instead of Fizzbin? I’m just asking for clarification because I’m so helpful.
Oh HELL No: Why don’t you just tell me every detail of what it is you’re doing, start to finish, so that I can conduct a thorough review of your entire process and tell you which hardware and software platforms you ought to be using instead (which will only coincidentally be the ones I personally am familiar with), thereby making me quite possibly the single most helpful human being you will ever have the good fortune to encounter.
To sum up…Answer the Question or Fuck Off. It’s right there in the title. 
I’d say Science/Tech/Math/Philosophy is right up there with politics and religion, as far as general interest is concerned around here.
I’d add Medical and Health as a possible forum too, but I think that might come too close to asking for medical advice, unless you made it very clear not to explicitly give any or to do so at your own risk.
Hell, add those two forums, and I’ll mod the damn things!