Many forums have a seperate forum for polls, forum games, and contests. Some also have a forum for "spam", or a forum where basicaly silly posts can be made and almost anything goes (how far depends on each message board).
I suggest that:
1) The two sub forums be made, either seperate or merged
2) Topics and posts made in those forums still allow users to accumulate points and post counts
If you diagree with 1 or 2, please seperate the two points.
I believe that doing this will:
1) Allow for better filtering
2) Improve the quality of the Off Topics forums/General forum
3) Contain those who are interested in points or post counts in the new sub forum(s)
People who still want to discuss non-gaming topics, but don't want the hot topics flooded with 10+ page threads of silly threads can filter those threads out. By also allowing people to farm for points or post counts in those forums will also ensure that those posters are contained in those forums and not incentivized to continue making threads outside of the forums mainly for the purpose of getting more points/post counts.
If people want to maintain the "integrity" of the post counts or points, then there'll need to be a transition period where the mods take a lot of effort to move threads inappropriately placed in the wrong forum.
If anyone is concerned about the fact that mods won't be able to go back through the entire archive of posts and move the threads to the appropriate forum, I think that the value of creating the forum comes from the future benefits. So mods only need to move the recent threads that are still bumped up to the top and reported by users for moving.
