Gangster, Dex has explicitly stated that sports are a Cafe topic, which means they are just like movies or tv shows. What is a never-ending source of annoyance to me is that sports threads are not given proper CS treatment.
Try and start a thread about a movie in IMHO, MPSIMS, or GQ and a mod will almost immediately kick it over to the Cafe, citing “the thread will do better/get more responses/reach its target audience better” in Cafe Society. These same mods simply will not move a sports thread, probably for the same logic. (I contend that they aren’t moved precisely because they would do better; the mods hate them and wish they would die, and keeping them spread among the different forums reduces their exposure and activity.) This in spite of the fact that their very own guidelines and precedents dictate that they should.
The only mod response I’ve ever gotten when I bring this up is “maybe the mods like sports threads, so they don’t want to kick them out of their forum.” Which is insultingly stupid.
One thing that seems to be completely off the table is the possibility of adjusting the forums in any way, despite the huge disparity in activity among them. This makes no sense to me; I’d estimate that a third to half of all new threads are created (or moved to) the Cafe. MPSIMS is a veritable ghost town in comparison. I would think that moving Sports over to MPSIMS would be a no-brainer, but the mods seem to feel this would violate some fundamental law. The irony is that MPSIMS is already a topic-based forum, not “type of discussion,” and yet they don’t want to put sports threads there because they “don’t split the forums by topic.”
Where do daily minutia threads belong? MPSIMS. Daily minutia is a topic. Where do health and fitness threads belong? MPSIMS. Also a topic. Picture threads? MPSIMS. Again, a topic. In addition to moving sports to MPSIMS, one would think food threads would be a perfect fit as well. Where do you see weight-loss threads? Diet threads? MPSIMS. How in the world can you logically put diet threads in a different forum than food threads? It makes no sense whatsoever.
If it were up to me, I’d leave all other forums as-is, but make the following changes to MPSIMS and CS:
MPSIMS gets food.
Cafe Society gets music, (comic) books, movies and scripted television shows.
A New Forum would get reality shows, sports, videogames; any kind of competition or game. This new forum, in effect, gets the dregs of the Cafe, and would be plenty active to merit being its own forum.
Ah, to dream.
ETA: Put all things alcohol in the new forum as well and call it The Pub.
