Why is the VIP Forum obsolete?
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The VIP Forum lacks purpose. Many previous attempts have been made to define the purpose of the VIP forum. A number of discussions in the thread which I linked earlier have addressed this topic, as well as innumerable staff threads. Despite this, no conclusions have ever really been reached, and beyond the occasional supporter-specific collaboration (a bit more on supporter specificity later), nothing massively productive has arisen from this forum which explicitly needs to be in this forum. Therefore, attempts to define the purpose of this forum have previously failed, and continue to do so.
Additionally, although the VIP forum's description states that "your valued input may be required on PokéCommunity-related issues", this rarely happens for legitimate reasons as mentioned in the linked thread. Supporters are useful for beta-testing new and upcoming features, but having a supporter forum is neither a necessary or elegant conduit for this, and this is something else that I'll comment on later. Therefore, in addition to lacking any alternative clearly-defined purpose, the VIP forum fails to meet the purpose defined in its description and at the very least, even if the forum is not closed, the "your valued input may be required on PokéCommunity-related issues" comment must be removed.
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Discussions in the VIP forum are equally or better-suited in other sections. Sampling the threads that have seen activity within the last month, they could have been in:
Treehouse,
Treehouse,
nowhere else (but more on this later),
Treehouse,
Treehouse (with adaptation: simply "did you go platinum", which I believe was a thread made elsewhere anyway),
Treehouse (despite the Treehouse thread on forum frontier existing for exactly the same purpose),
Treehouse or CQ&F,
Treehouse,
Treehouse. With the exception of the collab thread,
all of these could go somewhere else with little or no modification. The homogeneity of these threads also supports my above point (i.e., the content that is here could go elsewhere, and thus this forum lacks a specific purpose) and the overall activity compared to Treehouse is staggeringly low. Thus, there is significant overlap between this forum and others on PC, which have far superior activity statistics.
What are the issues with the VIP forum's existence?
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You should not have to pay for access to part of a "community". Supportership isn't, by definition, a purchase - but the VIP forum is still an area of the community accessible only to those who paid for it. Access to the VIP forum is not awarded based on merit within the community, nor contributions to the community; it's simply a matter of who has, or does not have, money. Of course there are exceptions to this, in that some people have won their supportership through contests or equivalent, but those people comprise a considerable minority. This is no different for people such as myself who have had money donated to them, as money is still what allowed access to this section.
Having a section exclusively for those who can afford to use it (or choose to donate to PC) is, by definition, anti-community; PC aims to include everybody regardless of age (to a legal extent), background, etc. and having a forum only inclusive to those with money is starkly against that principal. Given PC's generally inclusive nature, it seems unacceptable to me that we should foster the idea that those who can give money deserve a place to speak only among themselves, as if they constitute a "separate" or "distinguished" group. The key point here is that money should not distinguish individual sets of members in terms of who they can or cannot communicate with in an all-inclusive online community, but the existence of a supporter-only forum harshly opposes this principal. In this way, I believe that the very existence of the VIP forum is damaging to our sense of community and implies that those users who have money are entitled to a wider community experience than those who do not.
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"Access to the VIP forum" is a vague attraction for donations. When encouraging someone to donate for perks, we should be absolutely transparent with regards to what those perks are. People should know what, at the time of donating, they will receive for those donations. This is true for all supporter perks other than the VIP forum, which is regularly cited as disappointing by those who donated for its access. The content in the VIP forum crosses over substantially with other sections on PC, and its activity in comparison is sorely lacking. However, prospective donators have no way of knowing this, instead donating towards a perk which they have no actual understanding of.
Therefore, unless we publish the content of the VIP forum publicly, we cannot claim that donators have an understanding of what they will receive in return for their donation. While I still stick by my "donation is not a purchase of perks" stance, I believe that using the VIP forum as an attraction for donations is a vague and thus, in my opinion, unethical tactic of soliciting community donations. To resolve this issue, the VIP forum needs to be either removed (thus eliminating its position as an attraction for donations) or opened to public viewing, but not posting.
Common arguments against closure
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"If the VIP forum is closed, we should be compensated in the form of another perk". Despite the "supportership is not a purchase" rhetoric, I would be in support of this due to how "large" a perk this forum is. However, I believe that the necessity of shutting down the VIP forum (discussed above) outweighs any perk that could be offered to the supporters.
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"The VIP forum is the only place for supporter-relevant discussions such as perks." This is true, but they are few and far enough between that they do not warrant their own forum. Again, I believe that the reasons to close the forum strongly outweigh this point.
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"What about supporter collabs?" Supporters already have striking cosmetic differences when compared to members, and therefore collabs only serve to further emphasise this. This is also true of staff collabs, which should be eliminated by the same logic. Any collaborations should be open to all those who wish to participate, and if numbers become an issue (such as for graphic designers supporting the collabs), limits can be placed on the number of participants. Additionally, tight-knit groups of friends are always free to organise their own collaborations, meaning that the "supportership" binding of collabs is superfluous.
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"What about supporter-specific beta testing?" This is a good point which I believe should be maintained for supporters, as well as exercised more regularly. However, it does not demand a supporter forum; a separate discussion section is not necessary to support the beta testing of a feature. Instead, during beta tests, a much better solution would be to open a "you-and-staff-only" forum not unlike the
Scrapbox, where only select staff and the OP can view the thread and discuss issues privately and individually. This allows each discussion to be addressed in isolation, resulting in a much easier workflow for the developers when reading through and addressing problems.
tl;dr
The VIP forum is has continually failed to have a defined purpose, is redundant alongside other sections, is harmful to the idea of an all-inclusive community, and is a very vague and misleading reason to donate. For these reasons, it is not only obsolete but is outright damaging, and should therefore be archived.
