Had it been separated in the first place this would not be a problem. Yde has pretty much summed up most of our points so far.
No, you're not understanding the full situation. No matter when the two communities had been separated, if they had been separated there would have been a need to decide, by some means, which threads got moved over to the F2P-only forum. In fact when the F2P-only forum
was created, I asked the community to let me know which threads they wanted moved from the general whole-bracket forum into the F2P-exclusive forum, and that's basically when all Hell broke loose, precisely because it is so difficult for a group of people to decide what to do when some people want one thing and other people want another thing.
Honestly, you really shouldn't just say things like "this wouldn't have been a problem" when you don't have any basis for knowing what a problem it actually was. If this idea goes through and F2Ps get their own place for their F2P-exclusive discussion, then we will be in exactly, precisely the same situation that we were when I already tried this exact, precise same solution last year. The only thing that might make it different this time, and the reason why this idea is being considered, is because as time has passed, it may be possible that the F2P community has a different perspective and has different needs, and would be able to establish such a resource without summarily rejecting it and accusing the staff of trying to marginalize them and stuff them in a corner.
You have to try to appreciate my perspective here. Last year I gave F2Ps their own forum, and they rejected it because they thought it represented a diminution and marginalization of that community. And now a year later, a few F2Ps are saying they feel marginalized and diminished in the current arrangement, and are demanding the very same thing that they were given a year ago, which at that time they rejected, for the very same reasons that they're giving now for why they need it. Surely someone here can see the irony in that.
At this point right now, if we were to put it to a vote, and the number of people who self-identify as F2P who wanted a separation outnumbered the number of people who self-identify as F2P who didn't want to be separated, then that would be a reflection of a change in the collective will of the community. It was Yde who pointed out to me in a PM that even if the F2P community felt that it needed one thing a year ago, it could now feel that it needed something else, even if that thing is the very same thing that it once violently rejected. It's not up to me, because in matters of deciding the future of the F2P community I'm just one voice, albeit a voice who has the ability to make things happen. But don't claim that the very difficult process of implementing such a change would have been any easier if it had been accepted by the community and implemented fully the last time around, because that's just not true. And believing in that idea is going to blind you to the reality of the actual work it's going to take to establish a separate-yet-equal F2P community in a new forum.
As a bit of a history lesson for those whose join dates were after approximately early 2012: before there was even an F2P forum, there was just the 20-24 forum. Twinking at 24 was absolutely unheard of before Trial accounts became non-expiring in mid-2011, so very quickly the content of the 20-24 forum was filled with I would say 95-98% content (guides, threads, etc) written by and for F2Ps. The staff at that time finally capitulated and gave F2Ps their own forum, so that we could escape from the growing corruption of level 24 players who were moving into the bracket (and forum) and trying to cause us as much grief as possible (the same thing that several of you have said you feel the 29s, and to a lesser extent the Veterans, are doing now). But when the staff gave F2Ps the new forum, all of the content--ALL of it--remained in the old 20-24 forum. I was very vocal back then about how I didn't think that was fair, because in that case it was absolutely clear that that content, which we lost, applied
exclusively to F2Ps. Despite that fact, though, no content was ever moved, and F2Ps had to start over from nothing.
But as every user in this bracket knows, we persevered from that setback, we rolled up our sleeves, and we built a community anew. The same community that every one of you joined, for all the reasons that the F2P pioneers back then laid down as far as the community we were trying to build. And here today, you're faced with a similar situation, only this time the content that has been built since then does still apply to Veterans and P2P 20s. We had a completely legitimate claim to all the content back in 2012, and we didn't get it, and we accepted that and we built something great anyway. The claim to the old content now is much less legitimate, because it still applies to, and was built by, the people who now play Veterans, and I have every confidence that if you brave few who want your own forum have the same mettle that we did back then, you'll be able to start with a new forum of your own like we did, and build whatever you want to out of it.
The only threads that would be moved to an F2P-only forum, would be threads that only apply to F2Ps. That statement should be obvious on its face, but, here we are.
But it naturally produces content much quicker than F2P where things are tried and tested.
