Could we *PLEASE* remove off-topic from the front page?

[kenzomatic]

ioi said:
Let me try to explain the bigger picture.

VG Chartz is no longer one big community - we have reached a size now where there are a number of sub communitites and groups of friends etc. The most obvious example of this is the simple guests / members divide - you'll all notice that around 3/4 of people online at any one time are guests - just here to view some sales figures and check out a story or two.

I have to decide how to make vgchartz best appeal to everyone and the point does stand that a lot of time and effort goes into the sales figures. That is the prime purpose of vgchartz and where my time mainly goes. It does ruin the hard work somewhat to have a professional sales analyst visit the site and see "I LOST MY VIRGINITY" or whatever all over the front page. I don't want to stop people having these discussions and have always stressed how I want this to be a site where we can discuss a range of issues but it makes sense to keep the homepage neat and tidy and professional. For those who are here to chat and pass the time then live in the off-topic forum. It is still there, instead of refreshing the homepage refresh the forum page and see the latest threads.

The hot topics box was a key factor in developing the community but i feel now that it is starting to hold back further growth. Nothing beyond the top 30 topics are clicked on and viewed - so many get buried without a trace as people just don't check the forum pages themselves. Ultimately I will have a filter for people who are signed in to show what they want in the hot topics box, but the default for guests will be what is shown now.

In order to keep taking on more members we need to start splitting coversations more into sub forums and sub pages. We are soon going to have a seperate news hub page and same for forums, game database etc. So the bottom line is that you can still have your off-topic conversations, in fact even moreso, but we need to shift from using the "hot topics" to using the individual forums more if we are to grow as a site and allow all different people with all different interests and backgrounds to participate.

 I think it would be wise to add a "current events" or "news" section to the forum that would show up on hot topics. Because if China goes to war with Taiwan or Just some new global warming facts come out people would like to disccus those things in this community. And in this way more real subjects can be seperated out of off topic so that even if you don't put it on the front page at least "I'm back from my ban" and "Iran has detonated a Nuke" won't be in the same section.

Also you shouldn't get away from having the "hot topics" as the site gets bigger. Just filtter it differntly with rattings or views and a time filter, or allow mods to bump it to hot topics.

The reason I use these forums over say IGN is "ease of use." and that is extremely important on all fronts.