Okay, I've read everyone's responses to ideas and everyone's suggestions, here is what I gather as a proposed consensus:
Name: Mt. Moon
- I propose that this be its starting name. In line with its theme as a silly forum, it could be changed every month or whenever as a joke.
Visibility: Members Only
Non-Members cannot even see the forum. Registered members can see the forum and view its contents.
Posting Privileges: Application
People apply to the Admins to be allowed access to post in the forum, like the Web Contributors Forum. The general minimum requirement will be set with anyone falling underneath the requirement rejected, except in special circumstances. The minimum requirement ought to be that you have to have been a member for at least a month. You must all have accrued 100 posts.
However, while this is a minimum requirement, it is not a guarantee. If the mods in charge of the forum deem the member is not worthy, his application is rejected and he must wait a week to reapply.
These stipulations and how to apply will be put on the 'warning' page.
Warning Page: Yes
If we can, once clicking to enter the forum the warning page will be displayed before going any further, basically stating 'Beware! Adult content! etc' as well as stating how to apply for posting privileges, although whether this is feasible or not depends on the board technology.
Rules: The bare minimum
Basically, rules ought to be the bare minimum, basically to avoid the forums from getting into any legal trouble or gaining a reputation of being particularly vile. So, hardcore porn, illegal porn, full frontal nudity and posting any sort of illegal content (including links to torrents and the like) is strictly forbidden. Without this compromise, I doubt our proposal will be accepted.
There has been some discussion about if certain language should be banned, such as overtly racist language (e.g. the 'n-word'). Although I don't condone it, I think at least to begin with, apart from obviously illegal stuff as noted above, everything is fair game. If people start being idiots and just spamming certain racial slurs over and over, then they can be shunned (see Moderation below). If there is a consensus that certain language ought to be banned after the board's creation, then we can implement it later. I'm not saying this to defend certain language, but it cannot truly be no holds barred if there are certain banned words.
Furthermore, apart from posting illegal content, it should be that you cannot get infracted on this board.
Moderation: 2-3 Mods
I think 3 Mods should be picked to moderate it. Since there seems to be an attitude over there being too many mods, and since there ought to be experienced members handing this forum, they ought to be picked from the existing staff force. If need be, some can step down from their current positions if they feel they would only want to mod a single forum, especially one to be as likely as volatile as this one. At a later date, if a member shows himself/herself to be capable, he or she could be modded as well. Perhaps even democratically!
Mods have a few duties: 1, they decide whose applications get approved (say like America's Got Talent, a majority of 2 to 1 means they are approved). 2, they delete illegal content, shit posts and choose what approved members get banned from the forum. 3, they decide if any threads are particularly funny and deserve to be archived. For this duty, obviously people can request a thread to be archived.
Other things:
Post Count Disabled: basically posts in Mt. Moon don't contribute to forum post count. This discourages shit posts, PC++ behaviour and other useless junk.
No Anonymity: People seem to overwhelmingly disagree with Anonymity, and so do I, so I guess that is no longer an issue.
1 Hour between Thread Creation: Just to stop people spamming crap threads and to encourage fresh, varied content. Works on other boards. Can be extended or removed after the board is created.
Max 30 threads: I say a maximum of 30 threads at once, at least to begin with. We can either increase or decrease this limit after the forum's creation if we need to, but I say 30 is a pretty good benchmark.
Place on the Forum: This is undecided. I am firmly against it being a subforum of Misc, but I say to begin with it goes in between Interactive and Archives. It can be moved later if we need to.
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That's basically my proposal.
I think the sooner we get it up and running, the better it will be. It's going to end up we're going to sit here arguing over minor details that can be edited very easily after it is created, so unless you have a very real pressing concern, I say we just go for it with this proposal. Too much time spent tinkering is time wasted.
If you're against the spam forum, which I see a few people are, then don't participate. Easy enough. I don't like Anime but that doesn't mean I am against a forum being there.
If you're worried about member behaviour becoming worse due to this, I say that this will actually improve attitudes as all the flaming and spam happens in one concentrated area, rather than people trying to derail decent threads in Misc and other forums.