# Moving some off-topic discussions to the chat



## dreamtime (May 21, 2022)

We have locked the 3 most-active and derailed off-topic threads (Covid, FE, Russia). You may not be surprised to hear that these 4 threads made up a significant percentage of all forum posts in the last 1-2 years, displacing other important discussions. Many members were not adding new data, but simply started fights with other members who didn't agree with them.

This is the last of our recent changes (see Warnings and Bans) aimed to improve a slow but not so subtle decline of both forum quality and atmosphere over the last year. We are now applying the same rules to everyone via the warning system explained in that post.

We are preparing a space (chat room) in our matrix chat resolved for discussions of the nature of our realm. Rooms/Spaces for the other topics already exist and you are welcome to join the other members there.

If you haven't joined the chat yet, you can do so here: Chat Instructions

We are *not* banning these topics from the entire forum. There are still several threads that discuss either Covid, the shape of our realm, Russia or American Politics. But most of those threads have a more historic focus, in line with the goal of the forum. And it would be appreciated if you could keep in mind that discussions resolving around these non-history topics should ideally be connected to a historical aspect - i.e. if someone published a factual overview of the evolution of geocentric and heliocentric systems over time, that's a history thread, and not a thread about earth shape primarily.

And by the way - isn't it way more interesting to collect data on how our ancestors' view of the earth and cosmos changed over time, than to fight with other people over the exact shape of earth?

If you contribute to a thread that discusses contempotary issues (politics or earth shape), it would help if you try to connect these contemporary topics with a historical aspect.

For those of you who feel alienated because things have changed - please be aware that without strict moderation a forum will likely die a slow death over time. And we don't want that happening. Forums have declined in recent years, and most forums have already shut down (sometimes due to lack of activity, sometimes due to the enormous effort required to moderate without monetary compensation). Luckily, we have many members who understand how much energy we put into this as a team, and many of you donate regularly so that we can cover the costs.

For now, the locking of these 4 threads is an experiment, and we will observe the effects in the next few months.

Generally, we acknowledge that these topics have a place and are just as relevant as history, but the forum wasn't created to be an earth shape and politics chat with history as a mere curiosity on the sideline.

We hope that those of our forum readers and members who are actually interested in history can welcome these changes.


----------



## dreamtime (May 26, 2022)

Re-opened the Battle of the Gods thread due to member request and reflecting upon it.

FE and Russia thread will probably stay locked no matter what, due to low quality of contributions there and the massive derailing going on.


----------



## dreamtime (May 29, 2022)

If you haven't already, you can now join into the off-topic room:

Create Chat account if you haven't already Chat Instructions
Click here Join Offtopic


----------

