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db,

"I remain unconvinced by your arguments"

What elements of my arguments do you disagree with? Blarg, Matt, me, tdarko, PDPG are just a few of the posters who have explained why OOT will lose much of its interest to us if it is no longer the center of A&E discussions. Do you not believe that? Do you not think others share that sentiment? Do you not think that would have impact on OOT traffic?

"as you remain unconvinced by mine"

Huh? I believe I have agreed with most of your arguments. Separating the A&E forum would create a popular forum that would on average have a higher level of intelligent discourse than OOT. Isn't that your general point?

Again, I'm curious which of my specific points explaining why a split would likely reduce total traffic to 2+2 you disagree with.

As for elwood's post, he pretty much hit the nail right on the head in terms of the analysis that an online company does in making a decision like this. First step in the analysis is something I did very early on in this thread. Take the existing asset (OOT). Write up a description of what that asset becomes after the change. Is that asset still as compelling as it was prior? If not, how much less compelling is it and is the change significant? This is a basic analysis that is done all the time by content/discussion-based sites.

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Very good post, El D. I have to agree OOT would become less compelling to me. The percentage of garbage compared to good threads would go up even further, and it's already a precarious balance and always has been. Splitting the forum would make OOT much more of a quick browse and yer outta there kind of deal, for me. That kind of thing might harm the OOT community, if enough people feel the same way.

Whether the resulting A&E community would provide enough value to people, and traffic to the site, to make up for OOT's losing some of its luster, I dunno. I think OOT would still have a heck of a lot of traffic, especially since A&E won't be specifically banned from OOT anyway, per Mat. It would just probably be a place I'd have less fun visiting.

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A lot of the best OOT posters have expressed similar sentiments. With these posters no longer making OOT as entertaining, many other posters will also choose not to spend as much time here, EVEN IF THEY NEVER READ A&E THREADS! Crappy threads often get the traffic they do mainly because of 1 or 2 really good posters. If those posters move to the new A&E forum, the decrease in OOT traffic will be far greater than the OOT->A&E shift in traffic.