Let's take an alternative approach. Instead of punishing people that make bad threads, lets reward the ones that make good ones. Will further discuss on IRC.
In my opinion, to qualify a place in Discussion, the thread would actually have to be a discussion-based-topic. Bad threads are those such as "what movies do you guys prefer", which tends to be opened quite often.
Can't really do anything if there is nothing left to be generalized. With a board for all worthwhile topics, not many are left to be put here that cannot be moved, as Dalir said. So as for thread quality here, there's not much to do aside from remove some of the less necessary boards in elerk. Alternatively, you could remove Discussion and move the elerk board to the top of the forums. Banning people for making crap threads would just discourage them from posting here (discussion), they would just post the topic in the relevant elerk board anways, lowering traffic to Disussion even more.
Whatever, that's where I stand. Let me know if I misunderstood.
Edit: I think Rapid Threads is the least necessary, and many of the topics there can be moved to Discussion.
imo whoever made the music and tv board, was a worthless failure. I think I made the music one at request on irc when drunk, but nevertheless, I didn't come up with it.
perhaps someone should move them.
Well, I was kinda hoping that with the re-arrival of Wibbles and the introduction of boards such as Rapid Threads would filter out the bullshit from Discussion...
...and it does, to a certain degree. Sadly, this community seems to be partially lobotomized when it comes to making good threads, so the activity in Discussion has dropped quite a bit. This all makes a board mod such as myself confused - where should I draw the line. If I keep being to strict, there'll be but two or three active threads in GD at a time. If I slack off, the activity rises, but the quality will drop as a negative repercussion.
In my opinion, to qualify a place in Discussion, the thread would actually have to be a discussion-based-topic. Bad threads are those such as "what movies do you guys prefer", which tends to be opened quite often.
Well, ok, take that last thought one step further and maybe we could come up with an answer. What sort of things actually DO belong in discussion? I think if you guys could answer that question, the rest may begin to make a bit more sense.
lol, I almost made the same suggestion as stonewall, luckily I divined the rejection that would follow before I did.