Silly idea-- I would elaborate but other people have already said my thoughts so no real reason to.

I rarely go into the forums from the forum tab, i use the hot topics...If i had to do it the other way round i wouldn't be able to choose which random title interests me and i would end up staying in "sales" and "Nintendo", with very occasional forays into "Sony" and "gaming"

and it wouldn't stop any "trolling" of a specific console because people can easily go into a specific tag and troll anyway.

It might cut down on occasional "bashing" (assuming i have understood what both it and trolling are) because some people who are prone to it might not bother visiting other areas (effort of opening a new tab is too much)

I think Hot Topics should stay as well. That's the first thing I look at, and I see many others saying it as well. I think if you remove a feature MOST people seem to love and make it more difficult (or not a convenient) for them to navigate, people will go elsewhere.

I would never have known Nights was rumored to come to PS2 without Hot Topics, or that some games got higher or lower reviews that were on systems I didn't check that day.

Trolling, as much as people complain about it, can REALLY stimulate some good discussions in a lot of instances. Just MHO.

Don't discourage discussion just when the sigt is exploding, community involvement is the BEST way to grow (i work in the internet business on the music end) and Hot Topics is doing more than you can imagine to help fuel your growth. With a vibrant community, you will grow at an astronomical rate.

How else am I supposed to get my troll on?!

Yeah hot topics has to stay! End of discussion. However there is room for improvement. How about arranging the topics in different sections. Top 10 hot topics for each section: a top 10 Wii topics, a top 10 xbox360 topics, a top 10 Sony section and a top 10 handheld section. A top 5 for the general, pc, sales and other stuff. All in different color codes.

As some others said: Hot topics are nearly the only reason I read the forums. I use nearly never the forum-site itself. I like the idea with the color-coding. I would even say, that if you are on a thread, the background-color gives you a hint about the forum you are on.

Sony should be black and Wii blue.

Although removing them *might* help the hate problem (which exists, but personally I don't think it's that bad), but it would also cut down the communications and purpose of the forums. It would be like the old saying of throwing the baby out with the bath water.

Some of the suggestions of how things are displayed would be ok, but definitely don't like the idea of dropping them completely....

No.

more like stop the trolling on the forums, i love vgchartz the way it is