Kiwi Farms

Despite my liking for it, the Salt Mine is being looked down upon by many users and members of the staff. In fact, the reason I was offered a supervisory role in the first place was because I objected to one of the staff members regarding the subforum as a dumping ground for bad threads.

I've personally never understood the vitriol, which makes receiving feedback that much more important. I'm only leaving this thread open for the duration of the weekend, so get your shit in now (and if you have anything important to suggest after the fact, PM me).

Here's a collection of my thoughts, hopefully not too tedious of a read...

Thread Tags
The two I have planned which I 'beta tested' with text (which led to Null getting mad about 'Search Engine Optimization', oops!) are for threads in which we have a lot of in-house salt, and threads regarding people who generate salt. 'Locally Sourced' and 'Pillar of Salt', respectively.

Regarding Locally Sourced...
I often hear complaints about threads that, intentionally or unintentionally, turn into heated arguments between kiwis regarding the subject. (i.e. 'Locally Sourced'). But to me, not only is this entertaining content, the idea of trying to shut this shit down feels like it would turn the subforum into an echo chamber. So far, Trump dissenters that despise the way the left is handling themselves have been getting along well enough with the Trump supporters in the Megathread. When something comes along where opinions clash (like the militranny thing) I'd rather it just play itself out -- with obvious exceptions like a-logging and what have you.

Regarding Pillars of Salt...
What makes a Pillar of Salt different from our typical people-watching threads is they generally aren't embarrassing enough to be considered a full-on lolcow. These are people of interest that generally have their shit together, but they lack any sort of restraint and will use twitter or whatever other platform to angrily rant about things like politics, daily life, gaming, et cetra, and they do so in a manner that tickles our sense of schadenfreude. Tara Strong is our first entry, and I hope to see many more.

Gaming
This issue, in my opinion, has been blown out of proportion. There was a breadth of gaming-related salt threads due to the events of E3 (an industry-ran games convention) and it seems like those who weren't into games all that much felt like it was turning into a gaming-based forum or something.

It's not; I think the fact that those threads have come and gone demonstrates that, and now it's just the Dream Daddy stuff. But even if it were? I don't understand what the problem would be. Nor would I see the problem if the forum became incredibly focused on politics or television or whatever else. I'm a believer in just letting shit happen organically and only taking the wheel only when absolutely necessary. Hopefully that philosophy will lead to further growth.

ok i love you bye bye