This is a serious thing. The community and the way the site is as a whole could very well be changing. This is a bit of a long winded post, however, there will be no TL;DR here, as all things need to be carefully considered.
Whenever there is a disagreement, I try to understand all sides of the argument, and I see both sides of this argument. Not necessarily applying to only "less intrusive" clubs, but clubs in general, and even the old General Nonsense subforum (not the separate site it is today).
Many members of the community wish to keep the club forums the way they were. There were a number of somewhat off-topic (that is, not strictly pertaining to the scope of TPU as a whole) clubs, now closed, which many members wish to remain open. These areas of the forum were a great place for forum members to get together and talk about their interests, on another level beyond the cut and dry, strictly on-topic postings of the other sections.
On the other side, we have the moderators. Based on what I've seen so far, they take no issue with any of the above; however, that sort of off-topic banter is spilling over from the club threads into other areas of the forum, where it should not be. Add that to the plethora of reported posts, members acting up, serious threads being derailed (whether caused by the aforementioned "clubhouse mentality" or not), and whatever other issues they have to tackle, and it's a lot for them.
So where do I stand? All things considered, what is my opinion? As one of the older, active members here, I've always seen TPU as a great forum to be a part of. In fact, this forum is the only place I've continually stayed active at for such a long time. Anybody could come here, and with the help of our community, could solve nearly any computer related issue they were having; moreover, there was a sense of a community beyond that. It wasn't a cut and dry forum, strictly on topic all the time. I want TPU to be a place where we can not only be a great tech forum, but have that relaxed community, where, for lack of better words, it isn't so uptight. I feel that we should have a clubhouse subforum the way we did, not only for tech related things (Ryzen clubhouse, Xeon clubhouse, etc) but also for things not so tech related (UK clubhouse, Anime Nation, etc).
So, how do we achieve this? The administration made this push towards the stricter side (not after much discussion) because of everything they have to deal with already, with the addition of that sort of off-topic banter being thrown about in places where it doesn't belong. We, as the community (not any one, or handful of specific members, but as a whole) need to shape up. We all need to have the maturity to handle ourselves in such a manner that isn't creating a big mess for the mods to have to come in and clean up after us all the time. Stay reasonably on topic in serious threads. Be kind and respectful to one another. Don't bring clubhouse types of posts to other areas of the forum where they don't belong.
If the General Nonsense subforum was still a part of TPU, I would be advocating for that too; however, that's already done and over with, but the same argument would apply., which is generally keeping that stuff where it belongs, staying inside the lines in all other areas of the forum, and being kind and respectful to all other members. Although General Nonsense is different from clubhouses, I believe it could be tweaked a bit to remove it from being deeply integrated with the rest of TPU as a whole, but still be a part of the main site, with all the same members of TPU being able to come together and share our off topic discussions. The point is, if we want this to be that kind of laid back community, it's up to us to be able to handle it. If we can't handle it, then unfortunately, that's not what it will be.
