Hi guys. We have talked a lot about it a lot in the past couple of weeks and have come to the decision that the deletion of the Junk forum is the right way to go in regards to moving forward with the boards. I know there are some at the Dojo who are reluctant to see changes take place, and i have to say its an understandable reaction. But we have been in a transitional period over the past month or so, and whilst this is one of the biggest decisions to come out from all of this, it also appears to be the right decision. It is also a decision supported by a majority of the community (and also others who are indifferent to the forums existence) and certainly wouldn't be considered without that support.
The Junk Forum has been around here for as long as i can remember. It was always used for general spam, and in its later years for NSFW posts. I would tend to be on the indifferent side of the Junk Forums existence, but i would have never really have taken part in anything going on in there. However, one thing that's noticeable is that over the past 6 months in particular, the activity in Junk has decreased greatly. I mean even now, there hasn't been a post in there in over 48 hours, and over the past month only 5-6 topics have seen less than a few posts apiece.
Another thing is that if you read through a lot of the threads in there, you will see that they are not spam at all, but discussions that may have stemmed from an idiotic statement or joke which are still sensibly based and without insult or threat. So in reality, there is no need for those threads to exist in that forum at all.
Also (which i think we have said before), the staff are all on the same page now, and will be more lenient in regards to moderating the boards via interpretation of the TOS. Spam will always be spam, but unless it just goes way out of hand, then there is no harm in threads going a bit off track, or members kidding around with other members. As long as people still treat other people with respect and without insult then we are not gonna have any issues.
So, what will happen now....
What will happen now is that topics from the latest pages of Junk (around 5 pages perhaps) will be looked at, and if considered to be in any way valuable, will be moved and/or merged with other forums/topics around the board. For example, the "Ask Brothaman" topic is fine with me, and will be moved to General Discussion. Its fun, and there is a difference between fun and spam. Another example is the "Things that made you laugh - junk edition" topic. I mean that can be merged with the identical topic that exists in General Discussion.
Now i know people will possibly say, "but that was created because of NSFW related material", which was the case, but i am sort of unclear on the topic of NSFW posts at the minute, and i will wait on Yama to give a bit more clarification on this. But as far as i would say, NSFW posts would be ok provided if they are simply marked "NSFW" above the related picture/video and also the picture/video is spoiler tagged. But like i said, we will wait and see on this.
Once this process is complete, the Junk Forum will then be deleted. Since members posts did not contribute towards their overall post count, the lost posts will not be subtracted from a users post count. In fact, it works the opposite way with various topics being moved out of Junk, and into forums where posts are added to your count, that users post count will actually increase ( a few members have made a lot of posts in the "Ask Brothaman" topic for example). Also, with the rep system being reset in the past few days, there will be minimal/no loss to any members rep score.
One last thing whilst this is going on, is if we could ask members not to make anymore posts/topics in the Junk Forum, and now begin to consider that forum closed. This will make it easier for the forums pages to be looked at, and the switch overs and merges to be smoothly done. Like i said at the beginning, i understand if some members feel this is not right or just. But we are trying to move forward, and we feel that this move is contributing to the boards overall, rather than taking anything away from it. Also, we really are grateful for your patience and support during this time. Its appreciated as always