The problem of defining the General Discussion forum

I understand that every user gets something different out of the forums. Very little of my time is spent in GD, since what I need can invariably be found in other subforums. Most of my reading is done in Character Discussion and nearly always begins with me opening the Compendium & jumping to a character. Most of my posting is done in Suggestions & Feedback.

This is not to say that I think there's no value in GD at all (or that I never find any of the threads there interesting), but that I can understand how some users might exclusively browse GD. GD in any forum tends to have more of a social element than other subforums, and this might be part of the reason why users gravitate toward it. I'm sure there are plenty of users who have GD as their browser bookmark for "the forums".

As far as encouraging people to keep feedback in Feedback and events in Events, forcibly moving threads will probably help people get adjusted to that idea (though it will be a pain for the moderators for some time), but it might also help slightly to move GD further down the list of subforums.

• News/Announcements
• Events
• Tips/Guides
• User Help & Advice (including Roster/Level Help)
• Alliances
• Character Information & Discussion
• Character Concepts & Speculation
• Theories & Statistics
• Feedback & Suggestions
• →Community Discussion (General Discussion)
• Bugs & Technical Issues

Reordering the list also emphasizes the content that newer/unestablished users are more likely to need (Announcements and Help, which are likely what brought them to the forums in the first place). Even if you don't define GD based on what it isn't, you can demonstrate what it isn't by listing those things ahead of GD. Users see the specialized subforums that match their proposed content before they even get to GD.

I also support the previously mentioned suggestion of a subforum for discussing the actual forum, though I'm not sure whether it would make more sense to have that subforum exist outside the individual games (or even to have each game's directory link in to the same subforum).