Where exactly did an admin pop in to say what is or isn't allowed in OT? Neither Mahz nor Contra have posted on the subject recently, so I'm curious about where this information is coming from. Anyway, my thoughts on the topic.
Neither seriousness nor length are requirements for OT. OT is where discussions about any topic not about roleplaying is supposed to go. This is whittled down a bit by the Gallery and Articles/Guides areas existing, so anything that should go in those areas should not go in OT. On the pre-fall Guild, Spam and the Member Lounge were sub-forums of OT, and that was because they really are supposed to be sub-sections of the OT . The things that belong there are further exceptions to the "everything not roleplaying" role OT serves, which in turn helps to clarify what actually does belong in the regular OT section.
Spam was once called Forum Games/Spam. Given the fact that there is no new section labeled as being expressly meant for forum games, and since forum games are rather spammy by nature, we can assume Spam is where forum games belong still. The other stuff that gets posted in there could easily be made in OT or Member Lounge instead, but there are two major differences here from OT: staying on topic doesn't matter at all, and language and decorum are less of an issue as the area is given a bit of a pass on that stuff since it was made to house the fouler side of RPG in the first place. For instance, many of the political threads in Spam could be posted in OT with no problem, and the rest would only need a little bit of cleaning up on the language front to fit here; same goes for the threads where people are talking about their life being able to fit in ML. On that front, nowadays it's less of a difference in what content is allowed than it is a difference in community. Spam is kind of an outlier in that respect, where it's sort of a mash-up of OT and ML with a kind of insulated community, so trying to pin anything other than forum games and senseless spam as belonging only in the Spam section is silly.
The Member Lounge is for general socializing stuff. The section description lists "blogs, leaving threads, birthday threads, and general interest threads" as things specifically belonging there. On OldGuild, 'ask me anything' type threads and 'so-and-so's hangout thread' also belonged there rather than in OT. All of that stuff has been posted in Spam with no problem though, and I point to that as another reason why Spam is a sort of an exception to the rule of what belongs where. Anyway, the weird grey area here that needs clarification is that 'general interest threads' bit. Does that mean
this and
this and
this belong in the Member Lounge because they're talking about a show or game? But wait a second,
here's a thread about video games that got a lot of activity from OT regulars, OP included, without anyone saying it doesn't belong here, so what's up with that? Oh, and
that first thread I linked also has a bunch of OT regulars participating in it, and it's about a TV show. Huh. What about
this thread that's calling for people to save the internet? Isn't that something of general interest to the people of the forum? It could spawn serious discussion though, so does it belong in OT? How about
this thread about how long people have stayed awake? That's not a serious topic at all, so does it really belong in the OT? I'll note that this is another thread with quite a few OT regulars participating.
Honestly, I think it's a grey area that doesn't even need to be settled. The OT is at its core meant to be the default place for non-RP threads to go. As long as it isn't gallery material, articles or guides, forum games, nonsensical spam, or stuff meant purely for hanging out and socializing, it's fine if it's posted in OT. Show threads? Cool. Video game stuff? Alright, have at it. Threads on "serious" topics that don't happen to come with a multi-paragraph OP? Go for it. Seriously, so long as it doesn't 100% clearly belong in one of the other sections, post it wherever, who cares?
While I'm being honest, I have to say that this looks like a bit of hypocrisy to me. You'll call shenanigans on things you don't really care about that don't fit your standards for OT, but when it's about a show you like? Hot damn, screw the rules of what goes where, time for a general interest thread in OT! It's silly. There's no need to make concrete boundaries to replace the grey areas, because nobody is being harmed by the occasional not-quite-fitting thread being made in OT. It's a sub-forum of a roleplaying forum, don't take it so damned seriously. Just do what everyone else does when they see something they don't like in their favorite forum section: ignore it.
