I agree with the gist of this thread. I've been reading this forum for about a year now but it has been long enough for me to see a noticeable drop in quality.
It seems like the mods have been given the heads up to move all discussions that touch on race, no matter how high quality or popular, to The Race Track. There are some very good threads that aren't getting nearly the exposure they deserve because they're moved to the race track too early, and often for no reason other than having black in the title.
It's gotten to the point that half the threads I start reading in The Locker Room have been moved to The Race Track by the time I'm done. This wasn't happening a month ago and it certainly wasn't happening a year ago.
This is definitely an issue.
On top of it, it seems like all the mods in here are trying to downplay the issue and are couching it in the most positive, non-inflammatory light possible, talking about avoiding trolling and overly long threads.
Not once have I seen a mod go "hmm...maybe this is a problem" which is disconcerting because this is obviously an issue everyone else has noticed.
So when you got a bunch of users speaking up about something and the mods going "nah there's no issue. we're doing this for your own good." it makes you think. There's a growing divide between what the users want, are used to, and are entitled to on this site - and what it has slowly become.
The Locker Room went from a vibrant intellectual community with quality threads to a childish and irrelevant copy or JBO or misc - the PAWG edition. I used to be intimidated to post in that subforum and now I just
at all the stupidity
The fact that all the changes have been slow, small, yet oddly consistent is just more proof that this is systemic and planned. It's not a hodgepog of mods doing their own thing. There is consistency here. And it is insidious. There is no one thing you can point to that can not be explained away by a mod. It has been a subtle step by step shifting of things. And it makes one think