Yep, and that's my idea to reduce the noise in the DIR forum from all the "accidental" flybys that make it difficult to moderate.
- Remove the DPF and merge the old posts into the DIR forum
- Make the DIR forum opt-in, but unapproved (we can add approvals later)
- Pre-populate the opt-in on the DIR forum with the list from the DPF
- Make the DIR forum read-only for those not-opted-in so that newbies can find the discussions.
Then if someone "accidentally" replies to a post in the DIR forum with non-DIR answers they'll have to actually go opt-in in order to post, which makes the excuses a whole lot less plausible. Hopefully the real accidental posts are suppressed completely, and a good chunk of the problem posters won't actually bother to opt-in, and all we'll have left is the deliberate troublemakers who do go through the trouble, and then its easier for me to moderate those posters.
The problem right now is that the DIR forum is for "discussion" of DIR, and the problem posts do lead to "discussion" and with the "oops, I didn't see the forum" excuse its difficult to ban them as trolls, so moderation is troublesome. So we tend to rely on "community policing" from the few solidly DIR posters who are left who just shout down the bad information. We can be more aggressive in moderation, but then it just terrifies the newbies from ever wanting to ask a question.
