You do have a point, I'll grant you that. Forums do have the ability to help people gravitate towards a community. I also agree that it does seems somewhat contemptuous to deny having a full blown forum
outright.
However, even though you are starting to win me over (seriously Topazan, you make some excellent arguments), I would be most amenable to a full blown forum for ATT if it was at one remove from this site.
By that, I mean one of the following:
- Located completely offsite.
- Located on Orain, but on another wiki with interwiki links
However, I grant you that it would be very possible to have full blown forums here with LQT (I considered that at one point), though I'd probably have to archive all the forums we have now and replace our current setup with LQT styled forums.
With LQT styled forums, it would be possible to have many forum like features, and even forum avatars are possible, so from a technical standpoint, I could very well set it up here, and given how it would be site related, hosting it here probably would make the most sense to minimize issues with trope page linkage.
That said, my only remaining concerns are lack of adequate staff for such a venture, and we need to decide (if this comes to pass) just what and how we want to structure the forum and determine the rules for forum behavior, as what I DO NOT want is for the forums to (A) eclipse the wiki and (B) become a haven for creepy/illegal content as much as we can avoid.
If we had more staff, a decent set of guidelines, and very clear plan for how such a forum were to be set up (and assuming the majority of the community agrees), I would assist in setting up a LQT styled forum.
Basically, you've convinced me it might be worth the effort, so if you can get a lot of other people on board, I will be willing to help set this up.