Quote from ManthaThe secret forum thing? It's not a common practice on other forums, as much as I've seen. I've actually never seen anyone do that, lol.
It's certainly not an uncommon practice. Lots of forums I've been to have some sort of secret forum. Hell, even reddit has a secret forum thing in the form of reddit gold.
As someone who has been in a few, it's not a terrible idea in practice, but it tends to work better (if at all) in bigger communities. It's probably redundant and unnecessary considering SP's size, and that still doesn't take into account the possible elitism that can result from it. So yeah, definitely agree that we shouldn't have a secret forum thingy.
Quote from Not_NishI honestly don't think downvotes will ever be a good idea here because people WILL abuse them eventually.
Let's never do downvotes. Nothing good comes from them anyway. If someone makes a bad post, that's why the report function exists.
I don't mind upvotes though, I think it acts as another way of posting (with a like being interpreted as "that was funny" or "I agree") that prevents unnecessary posts. It can have the same negative effects as downvoting, but at least it has a separate function. I've seen it implemented in plenty of forums with just upvotes/likes, and it's worked fine for the most part from what I've seen.
To be honest though, SP is fine the way it is, but if we do need to change, this is just my opinion.