Okay my problem with "all in one" forums, and "spam" forums is that they
do direct attention away from other sections, and they
do tend to lower the overall quality of posting on the forum as a whole. I'm very aware that people are shaking their heads at that statement already, so let me explain.
When you create a forum in which has loose rules and allows members to post whatever kind of content they wish provided that it fits in with the global rules, it diverts attention away from elsewhere. The reason for this is because other sections are structured in such a way that it requires more effort to post within them. For example, if you were to have a "spam" forum, an artist could post their one picture there and say "what do you think of my drawing?", instead of actually taking the time to find the correct place to post singular artworks in A&D. They would also avoid the necessity to post a number of pieces to create a thread such as you need to do in the A&D section. A similar point can be made about The Round Table, it is a section whereby more serious discussion on topics of a more "mature" nature are to be held. However it is much easier to bring up those topics in The Treehouse where pretty much "anything goes" because you don't need to be prepared to defend your opinion to the same degree was you would in The Round Table. There's an overlap.
Now this overlap can happen for any section, when you have a catch-all section and/or a spam forum you end up just filtering activity from elsewhere into it because it's more lenient and lesser structured. Such leniency should be promoted in terms of how staff relate to off-topic posts, and general rule breaking as opposed to how a forum is structured as it leads to messy distribution of topics.
I am in no way saying The Treehouse is "all bad", I also agree it's not a spam forum as that is not what should be promoted here. However due to the relaxed nature of the forum and the mass of activity that is involved in it, it actually brings down posting quality in other sections. It goes back to what I said before, when we had Other Voting Polls the section was mostly clear on the kind of content you were to include. If it was a question about every day life and morality, go ahead and post it in OVP. If it was a discussion on an on-going event, news article, travesty, or world issue then go ahead and post it in Other Chat. Now we have this ambiguity between the two sections whereby a lot of what can be posted in The Roundhouse can too be posted in The Treehouse, but it's much easier to post in the latter because everything is more laid back and shitposting is more rampant. In itself, that's a problem between The Treehouse and The Round Table, but overall it captures my problem with catch-all forums. They overlap and step over other forums too much. I've seen dozens of threads that belong in Culture & Media posted in that section, 10 times as many threads that should have went into The Round Table, a smattering of topics that should have been in Computers & Technology, and so on.
My recommendation isn't to
remove a catch-all forum, but if you're going to make one make sure it catches the things that don't go elsewhere. Don't allow it to become a basket that people can throw any kind of topic into. So in my opinion The Treehouse needs a slight re-purposing to stop the influx of threads that have a better place to be in.
As for a "spam forum", you might as well just remove all the other sections and throw the rulebook out the window if you think it's a good idea to have a spam pit on a large, structured forum environment. What is good for activity is not always good for your brand.
You've been staff here for nearly a decade, you're capable of a better response than that.
