You forgot the third reason. It's similar to wanting to see how people live, but there are people who are cyber stalkers who use it for that very purpose and would be considered 'addicted' to it. And Facebook is monitored, but probably not in the sense you're meaning. Sure the clubs may possibly be disbanded if you're going to go into quests information or something specific that shouldn't be talked about. But that's the same as this forum. If you're going to create a club that specifically is there to bash on people I wouldn't be surprised if it were shut down. The main reason people get threads shut down is typically because the thread is beginning to spin out of control with rage and emotion that may not have been intended to begin with.
If it's someone trying to rally a call for all the other players to voice their opinion that almost always begins to spin out of control and what's the purpose of it? Remember Despiser? So do I. He quit because of situations like that where players brought it to the main forum accusing him of cheating which eventually drove out the fun for the entire game and resulted in him quitting. F0xx was getting continual despise of players believing he was cheating or stating that it was only because of the class being OP as Kotrag. To me that is the complete antithesis of what we're meant to be doing which is attracting new players. If they were to see how much hate people have towards others for doing well, why would they waste their time coming here to play and eventually hit that level just to be continually told that they're cheating somehow?
I understand rage of when something happens as I myself tend to get heated over stupid things to the extent I've hit brick walls out of rage, I've rebroken my back in a heat of rage doing something stupid because of it, and I've even lashed out with words towards people I know would break under what I'd say to them. Does it make it right? No. The major difference between the forum and RL though is that in RL you can't go back in time to see it if it wasn't already recorded and put on YouTube, where as the forum you can at least have it locked up and some people would be none the wiser who don't go back and read old posts.
Lets take for example the last one that was. Player felt that they were wronged by another character for fighting them and went to point out every single damage affect upon them and felt it should be addressed. Rather than going to Prayer they took the same path to help further people's angst against that character and player in general choosing to publicly post it instead. That player finally stated that they offered to use another method to which the player instead of saying yes and continuing they chose to log off and post the log. Horrible way to go about it by anyone. It went from a quiet discussion where it should've remained to a locked thread to force down people's throats their own injustice of what happened. These are the sorts of situations though that result in losing players rather than keeping them. On one hand you have the player who posted and may leave because they chose a horrible avenue to result to begin with. The other is the player it was directed towards. We're creating the stigma that if you choose to excel, you only risk being belittled and poked at by people who can't defeat you and are always losing to you. I for one would rather have those posts locked than seeing how quickly things go from an adult conversation to childish remarks because a person feels their skills are at their peak and shouldn't be killed/beaten so easily.
In terms of the rest of the forum being locked away you see similar reasoning as to why they were. Politics get heated and begin to degrade quickly in most cases. Though we have proven recently to be able to get over that without resulting in childish antics. I myself refuse to go on Facebook during election season because I have lost friendships over simply responding to a persons post after they preached acceptance when they thought Hillary would win and then went into a rage once she hadn't and I pointed it out. It also happened once when news was going around about people sending chemicals to those who supported Bernie and they chose to make the accusation that it was all Trump's fault and how his followers were being told by him to do so. Which after seeing the same video and reading a bit about it, I pointed out the fact that it wasn't because of him but rather just bad eggs that exist regardless of people running for office. In terms of creating a club simply to share scripts on they use for varying purposes in the game, it's not a bad idea. It's actually understandable to do so and it would help both new players and old alike. How would that bring up issues of removal of a club though? You don't have to join them if you want to, but to stir up a situation where there was none to begin with because you feel as if you personally have been wronged is asinine. The game and the forum are two very different entities that shouldn't be crossed. The Shoutout portion is literally the only point that should be allowed, and even that one I'm against in most cases for these very reasons. If we can't learn to separate the two, you only serve to create illusions that they're both the same which is false in every facet. If you feel that it is creating a negative stigma where you yourself are being singled out, do exactly what I did years ago. Quit reading the forum, and if you choose to quit the game then so be it. I've done this several times and only once did so because I felt the OOC portion of the game was too much for me. I stopped for two years then, at another point I quit for 4 years, and I even just stopped reading the forum once to ensure I wouldn't think too much into things.
I wouldn't mind seeing a target bar due to the fact that it doesn't harm the game in any way or give someone a heads up really. It could go away when you're dirt kicked so you lost that illusion of knowing how much they've been hurt and so that the other person could have their pets rescue them so there's no edge to it. I myself have one in my client that tells me what % they're at roughly already, and does it help? No, 90% of the time I find it pointless and I don't rely on it. But when I do pay attention to it, it's usually down to the wire sort of situation where it can go either way.
