I agree with everything the OP said.
Although i dont ever remember the hot topics for the forum not being on the home page of the site :? Maybe i am remembering incorrectly.
Starting off with the first point Smeags raised, in that the nation threads are redundant, i fully agree with this. Not only is it redundant but it's also a poor replacement for a forum. By design, a thread was never meant to be a forum. As d21lewis said, too often you see a lovely title on the hot topics, click on the thread and then never actually find the article and you never find the discussion around it. Its ridiculous. This makes the thread almost impossible to use for new users or for users who dont usually visit that thread. Where users who are constantly in the thread are following the discussion and articles posted in near real time. This is the first step in segregating other members and discouraging others to participate in the thread.
If you click on any other non nation thread you immediately read the OP which will have the relevant information as related to the title. And then all the discussion is around that topic in the following posts.
This leads to the second point Smeags raised, now that nation threads are becoming larger, first with the Vita thread, then the PSNation thread and now the Xbox thread. So much news articles get posted in these threads and don't get posted in the general forum. This further skews the perception of the site, in that all the positive news will get posted in the nation thread, while all the negative news will get posted outside of it, because all the fans of that platform are in the nation thread.
And that's not even the worst part about it...the absolute worst case scenario is where you have members/leaders of the nation thread actively encouraging fellow nation members to NOT post in the rest of the forum. This is the second step in segregating other members, and leads into the next point raised by Smeags segregation.
This is possibly one of the worst negatives of the nation threads. Non bias, non-aligned and new users will more than likely not post in the nation threads. The majority of posters who do not associate themselves with any particular brand, do not want to enter in a discussion where everybody shares almost the exact same viewpoints. I personally feel as if i fit into this category, even though im more a PS fan than anything else. But i've never actively posted in the the PSNation thread...or any other nation thread for that matter. Why would i post there when 90% of the people in the thread are all pretty much saying the same thing, i want to hear opinions and viepoints that are different from each other. And too often than not this is how the discussion goes in nation threads.
Also as a non-alligned user or even worse if you are alligned with a different nation thread. Goodluck raising your view in a nation thread. Say anything remotely controversial or against the flow and be prepared to either be ignored, reported, insulted or ganged up on. I've personally had this happen to me which ultimately led me to leave this site for a while. And lets be honest here, these threads by nature are not tolerant of negative view points. People are already calling them safe havens.
Lets also tackle the term safe haven. What exactly do we want to be safe from? Is it trolling and flaming or is it negative viewpoints that are different from your own. In my experience its a mix of both. Ultimately if any thread is posted in the forums, the community as whole needs to abide by the rules and moderators needs to enforce it. We need to get rid of this idea of a safe haven, the entire site needs to be a safe haven for all view points in any topic at any time. Anything less than that would encourage intolerance of differing view points. And if you feel that this is wrong then i believe as a community we need to make it clear that we WELCOME all view points. Its written in our rules!
That's the biggest issue i believe is with the nation threads, ultimately it leads to greater intolerance of different view points.
Recently we've also been seeing what I'd call a gang mentality on the site. Users protecting only their own, pushing their own agenda's onto others and all this carrying over into other threads which all add to creating a very toxic environment on the forums. Perhaps as a mod i am more prone to seeing this, through the various reported posts or even the words and sentiment used in reports itself. We see it all as mods and its not nice.
Also if we are trying to create safe havens...its not working. The general sentiment towards the rest of the site will still be bad by the people seeking this safe haven, as they now feel vindicated for the need of a safe haven. What does this lead to? Well we've already seen a number of breakaway sites from Vgchartz as a result. Vizioneck was one - and all the members who joined initially were from the PSNation thread. Yes i know Vizioneck would still be around regardless :P but the point still stands that there were many disgruntled members. Something similar seems to be in the works for the Xbox nation thread where we will again see a mass exodus of fans. Ultimately this has almost no impact on the Vgchartz forum, but the motivation should be to try and retain our users and not push them away.
I guess from all of that you can tell what i think needs to happen to Nation threads. But i actually believe their is a place for them in the community, where fans can discuss topics that are not thread worthy and do fun stuff like name a leader, have officers, create banners, have daily polls and games, and just general chatting and making friends.
That's great, but creating a mini forum in a thread is not. Segregating the rest of the community is not. Creating a us vs. them mentality is not. Being intolerant towards different opinions and views is not.
So as it stands now i feel the negatives far outweigh the positives. I'd suggest creating parameters around which the nation threads operate, or have a period where we lock them for while and then open them up later etc. but something needs to be done or it will further escalate.
