Was this a decision made by the Debate moderators then?
The ultimate decision was made by senior staff (Globals and Admins) on the site, which includes me. The Community Forums, Forum Games, and Creativity areas have been significantly declining in activity over the last couple of years and we felt a consolidation was in order. We looked at what we should keep, merge, and retire, and compared the activity levels to the items requiring staff time (reports/time spent moderating/appeals/etc).
It was nice to have a place to put potentially vitriolic thoughts where intelligent people could sift through it for you. I was actually trying to find the words for such a thing. It's not something I can do on Dotabuff, haha... Can you suggest any similar forums with a decent mix of political backgrounds like this one has?
I do not, but if other forum users have good ideas, please let us know. In all honesty, other gaming sites don't have debate sections like this one for some of the same reasons I mentioned above.
On Friday, May 5th 2017, after more than 12 years, the Debate sub-forum will be closed as part of a wider Community Forums reorganization. This was not an easy decision, but we evaluated each area in Community Forums and determined that Debate required an unusually high amount of staff involvement for a non-Magic area representing a tiny fraction of the overall site's activity. The forum itself will be placed with the Retired Forums. As of Debate's closure, MTGS will no longer be hosting formal Debate threads. Current events can still be discussed in what will become the merged Talk & Entertainment subforum, but protracted arguments in the vein of Debate will be discouraged.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
I do not, but if other forum users have good ideas, please let us know. In all honesty, other gaming sites don't have debate sections like this one for some of the same reasons I mentioned above.
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath
TerribleBad at Magic since 1998.A Vorthos Guide to Magic Story | Twitter | Tumblr
[Primer] Krenko | Azor | Kess | Zacama | Kumena | Sram | The Ur-Dragon | Edgar Markov | Daretti | Marath