[quote=@Buddha]

So, I'm interested instead of hearing about why it's a bad idea (because my idea is the only idea so far) what you'd have in mind for re-energizing the subforum to maintain it to a degree where we no longer felt like we needed to merge it.


[/quote]

Absolutely, this is the discussion I'm interested in having.

I'm painfully aware that this draws paralells to that stupid 'woke' SJW bullcrap about white people not being able to identify with minority experiences blah blah.... 

But I feel somewhat uncomfortable talking about what should be done with Nation and Tabletop forums without people from those forums giving their point of view, I think there are probably a ton of other nuances about what makes their niches special that I could only speculate about.

As far as Arena, I could brainstorm with some of the other frequent posters. Like I said I think advertising more eclectic fights instead of just Dante Vs Sephiroth style match ups could go a long way. Maybe we could have a detailed article in the criminally underused 'News' Sub-forum about what Arena really is and what it entails and how interesting you can make it beyond just a simple fight. We could also start hosting tournaments in our signatures. To be honest I'm just shooting ideas out, but I know that while the Arena lot can be very protective of their space they are ALWAYS looking to improve, so it shouldnt be hard to get some more ideas floating. 

But it must be said, while I don't condone the language Xavier used I can understand his frustration. Its quite irksome when an essential 'outsider' to arena starts flippantly disparaging the forum that a lot of us take seriously as 'dead' and 'useless'. I imagine those who only do romance 1x1s on this site would get annoyed if we started claiming they are just a bunch of horny lonely cyber-sex people especially if it was something we knew little about.  Again these small measures of respect are important if you really want to have a productive conversation.