I've been active in RT since February 2013. Of my 5300 or so posts, over 1750 - a third - of them have been in RT. So it goes without saying that I have a great affinity for this section and have a strong interest in seeing it flourish.
I think it's important to begin with realization that RT isn't for everybody. That should be a given, and that is perfectly understandable. I personally haven't been involved with the new gen speculation, someone else might not have an interest in entertainment, every section has its own barrier to entry. Some people just aren't down for the discussions in RT. That's fine.
With that being said, I am very happy in the direction that RT is going. Even just half a year ago, there was a much greater frequency of uncouth behaviour. What do I mean by that? Personal attacks, calling people names, excessive aggression (especially over the course of multiple posts), ignoring points of contention and flaws in one's own arguments, "they're just wrong" arguments, bad faith, and a lot of attitude.
There was a crowd of people who generally incited and participated in those behaviours. They fostered an us-versus-them mentality that was unhealthy for the section and for discussion in general. They entered discussion with their emotions on the line, which is the last thing to do if you want a rational, respectful discussion. They also picked on certain members unfairly, in my opinion, and I regret that I did not stand up for them any further than I did. There was much tone policing and accusations of tone policing. Thankfully that's pretty much a thing of the past. I cannot recall a memorable instance of any of the above occurring within the last several months. Activity has also been low since about August 2014, in terms of both the number of threads and posts being created.
Things are better now! Other than the whole disruptive crowd thing being resolved, we've got thread tags and mods who are actively moderating discussions! We've also lost a lot of the troll activity that was rampant in 2010, and if they're still here, they're doing a damn fine job of encouraging discussion. We also have an uptick in activity since February 2016. I'm optimistic that RT will become more active in the coming months.
RE: Drama, there's always going to be some level of that in RT, and that's because we're playing with fire, essentially, hehe. IMO as long as there's no systemic perpetuation of drama (weak mods, an incendiary group of people, a culture of escalation over rational discussion) I think we're fine.
Otherwise, I've always been interested in increasing the appeal of this section. One way we could do that is by increasing the breadth of topics. I have a few things to say about this. Firstly, news topics. IIRC, in the past, news topics made up a larger proportion of threads. Space news, physical news, medical news – essentially news about scientific breakthroughs is generally interesting to most people and they have a low information barrier to posting.
Secondly, I've been getting interested in philosophy topics of a more general type. And I don't mean political philosophy because we have plenty of that already. I have a couple of thread ideas on the backburner right now. I think they'd be great for encouraging discussion and they don't have to be hot-button issues so they won't be so controversial.
Thirdly, I think events are a good idea. We've got PCNation going, which is good and very much deserved in a section like this one. We can always brainstorm new ideas though. Maybe something like weekly ethical dilemmas although that might get dark quickly. I don't know :P Let's spitball.
Fourthly, I tried doing a DCC when I modded this place (I think. I can't find it when I search for it so maybe I'm hallucinating). I don't really remember how well it took off, but I think it died eventually. I think my rationale was to "build community" or something like that – have a launchpad where people can get to know each other, so they can be more comfortable sharing their opinion in the section, be more civil to one another, etc. It might've been a bit redundant with the rest of D&D so if I could do it again, I'd either make it a fast-moving lite discussion thread with a much lower barrier to posting or make it a full-on casual DCC. It might be worth considering.
RE: Feedback, I think it's a good idea to find out why the people who don't post in RT don't. There's obviously the issue of the lack personal interest in this kind of discussion and I don't see that as a problem. But there might be other reasons that people don't come here that are worth looking into. I think I'm too much in the RT bubble to figure out the reasons why people don't come here unless I hear them from them myself. So if you're not an RT "regular" we would all be interested in your feedback.
Related to that are the people who used to post in RT (then D&D, and before then OC&D) but don't anymore. I'm not sure if they still lurk and would find their way to this post. Consider this a call for feedback from you as well :P What did you like when you around? Why did you leave? Is there anything that could be done differently? Anything you'd change? Maybe we could get this feedback thread more traffic somehow. So far it only has 100 or so views, and a lot of them might just re-views or refreshes by few actual viewers.
Question: is anybody a member of another discussion/debate forum? I know Serebii has one, and they're Pokemon forum like us so they have to be comparable to some extent. Maybe there's something we can learn from what other people are doing *shrug*
Anyways, definitely the more the merrier. The Round Table might not be for everybody, but it would benefit from having more people around.
