Make the rest of the site more welcoming instead of blaming the 4 threads that promotes civil and social communication

The growth on the community will be placed on things as ive spoken about time after time.  Lack of leadership on ioi's part.  Lack of innovation and active updating on the site with numerous problems.  Moderating problems throughout the forums.  Hostile behavior that can be classified as ghost trolling because i can get away with it. Inconcistency on numbers that are either wrong or all over the place on updating instead of updating them on a set day of the week, you sometimes have to wait weeks.  You never really know

What you also ignore is how many new members these threads have brought in because theyre more social and positive.  And without them, you also lose those members.

As someone who posts daily in Nintendomination, I think Nation threads are just fine in the forums (well, for Nintendo fans. Have no clue what happens in PSNation or XBE). For example, what I do there is make a compilation of news related to Nintendo and sales data into one post, that could generate discussion which is not thread-worthy. An easter egg in Pikmin? Making a thread for that is useless, but in ND you can simply post it, and some people may have a reaction out of it. I consider them good, simply because it's a general discussion thread about anything Nintendo related, and negative talk (about other companies) are nonexistant. That's not to say they are perfect, as you said, they do appear noninviting. I just see it as "Nintendo general discussion" thread. 

PS: I've seen longer OPs

1. Nation threads are good for minor news and other material not worth a full thread:

Not everything is threadworthy, although some users will likely disagree. Because of this, the Nation threads provide a place to discuss things that don't really have a place anywhere else. Want to make a comment on an exclusive that came out four years ago? Say it in the Nation thread. I know that I tend to miss a lot of topical discussion because I don't buy games upon release and because of that, I often find myself really wanting to talk about games after everyone is already done talking about them. This happened with Far Cry 3, and my laundry list of complaints with that game, and at the time, I posted it in an open discussion thread (which was later locked due to being redundant...hm). I wasn't about to make a thread about this stuff, because I really don't think my opinion is threadworthy (maybe that is why I've made a grand total of zero threads on VGC). I like having a place to talk about this stuff without having to worry about finding a place for this kind of discussion.

2. Things that are truly threadworthy will get a thread:

I don't think this really stops mass discussion of larger points. If something is threadworthy, there will be a thread of it and if it is really worth discussing, discussion will move to that thread. I really don't think users are shy about making threads (with some exceptions), so I don't see the problem here. I will say that I am more experienced with Nintendo discussion, so maybe this is more of a problem elsewhere.

3/4. Insular Communities aren't due to Nation Threads:

I can agree with point 3, but I'm not sure if the general schism (pt 4)  is due to the Nation threads. In the wake of The Order, I saw plenty of posts calling out people who weren't traditionally Playstation supporters as "haters" and whatnot. I think this is a problem, as it limits discussion and it tries to push away the "all opinions are welcome" nature of the Hot Topics forum, however, I don't think this really has much to do with the Nation Threads. While mini-communities do form in most long running threads (COMG, Anime, Rate the Song, Nation etc), I think that these are mostly positive relationships.

Overall, I don't particularly see them as a problem, although I also don't see them as really good for anything either. Yes, they are a good place for small news and discussion, but I wouldn't shed any tears over losing them.

Your OP is so long that it could be made into a saga
VGChartz: Before Nation Threads
VGChartz II: The Modern Nation Thread
VGChartz III: Electric Boogaloo Pt.1 & 2 (Why the cash grab? It didn't have to be strectched into two movies!!).

Me? I hate them. Hate them with a passion. I used to go into the Vita thread but goddam. I'd go to work for a day and there would be a thousand new posts and all about a different topic. I'd see an interesting topic in the title and click on the thread only to never find it! And I mean NEVER!!

The ability to edit titles and posts pissed me off initially. You'd post in one thread and when you came back, it would have a different title. The modern Nation thread is the ultimate realization of my gretest fear. I abhor them. For those that like them, enjoy. I just can't see their usefulness.

I'm surprised they're allowed on here as catch all threads hurt forums in terms of membership and discussions. New news will either not get a new thread or will be in multiple threads with members spread across them. It also leads to massive threads in which particular discussions become difficult to find or discuss because of all the noise.

I used to be on this site a lot but rarely post anymore and I believe the reason are these catch all threads. I think they pretty much ruined VGChartz and whenever I do end up stopping by I get turned off by these threads and end up leaving quickly again.

This is exactly how I feel about them.

I like the Nintendomination, though I could live without it. Don't visit often as is...

Yeah I rarely visit a nation thread, because I never felt like I belonged to a particular group. There are many pros in nation threads though. And I may sound blunt.

They keep extreme people from being scrutinized, while if they made their own thread it would lead to bans and a locked thread.

They have high activity, Thus if you post about something that many people do not know about, the odds that someone does is in your favor. If you made your own thread it might disappear as fast as the hot topics, which leads to nothing or spam.


On the other hand, I once posted in one of the threads. And the posts were going by so fast that my question was completely bypassed.

You maybe right about some of the information redundancy and lack of sub-forum activity. But I don't think schism is something that can raise any particular concern here. Essentially schism along "party" lines is an intractable inevitability. You might as well tell the worldwide Jewish, Muslim and Christian communities to get along better. There are certainly people in all the communities who would like to see less animosity, but there are those who's sole motivation regarding "outsiders" is utter annihilation. Unless you weed out the fanatic and permanently debar them from the community then fracturing of the community is inevitable. And retreating to safe havens is also a natural outcome.

One interesting thing to note about the company/platform sub-forums relative to level of activity is that the MS forum seems to me to have the most threads created by people who would not generally be called MS/Xb fans, or at least XB is not their preferred platform. The Sony sub-forum has somewhat fewer threads created by people who are lukewarm (at beast) towards Sony. The Nintendo seems to have fewer threads created by those who are lukewarm towards Nintendo. Though I think when the Nintendoom threads where at their peak that pattern may have been different.

For myself I don't really frequent the PSNation thread very often, and I feel like I get enough PS gaming information and get into as much discussion on topics of interest to me.

My main beef about the website is that sales data doesn't come out with enough frequency and regularity. If the web team wants to do something to increase broad based discussion it would be to bring out sales data more frequently and on set days of the week. And perhaps come up with creative ways of stimulating more analytical discussion on various aspects of sales data. This site has one unique point of difference and that providing the most comprehensive, freely available, worldwide video game sales data. The accuracy of that data notwithstanding, the way that information is packaged and released can significantly contribute to broad based discussion.

And there are reasons why many of them don't post outside the nation thread. Im not saying xbox fans are magically better than others like classicgamingwizz is saying, there are definately a few out there with a bone to grind.

The resolution threads last year were painfully obvious attempts to put down microsoft and there are plenty out there who like to jump in on a good anti microsoft gang bang.