I could say the same thing about game reviews.
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@meburningslime Game review are related. People work on their games and then ask to get them reviewed, so it’s basically giving them feedback. Which is one of the whole reasons the forums are here.
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That’s fair enough, but I still believe in the freedom of a break room. Many of you have posted on the “flowlab memes” area, and don’t try to tell me that’s related enough.
I want this to be available to all people, not just active users. For example, when Bentley comes back, you’re saying he’s not allowed to talk to us on the otc unless he gives you what you want for 50 days?
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Based on the current feedback, the majority seems to want a trust based Off-topic channel, but others are concerned about losing their Trust Level 3. I believe Trust Level 2 is a good enough qualification for a hidden Off-topic Lounge. I’ll wait until grazer gets back to collect more votes and feedback, but a Trust Level 2 hidden Off-topic Lounge sounds like it will be the most favorable option by everyone.
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I second that.
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Yes, I believe Trust Level 2 is a good enough trust level for off-topic discussion.
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Continuing the discussion from Official response poll to the Off-topic section debate:
Trust 3 seems best imo
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What happened… lmao…
I think that it would help if it was trust level 2, since it’s the least level required to consider someone an active member on the forum. Although getting to level 3 isn’t very hard, but it does take time for newer users so I think trust level 2 would be best.
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The qualifications for becoming a Trust Level 2 is pretty low, so it only diverts people that never got a heart or sent a heart, and have never read an hour worth of 100 posts, and never posted. While this helps hide it from total strangers, some teachers and parents, it might be worth raising the requirements to reach Trust Level 2, just for extra precaution.
Trust Level 2 – Member
Members keep coming back to your community over a series of weeks; they have not only read, but actively participated long and consistently enough to be trusted with full citizenship.
Get to trust level 2 by…
Visiting at least 15 days, not sequentially
Casting at least 1 like
Receiving at least 1 like
Replying to at least 3 different topics
Entering at least 20 topics
Reading at least 100 posts
Spend a total of 60 minutes reading posts
I would suggest raising this to:
Visiting 60 days total
Casting 10 likes
Receiving 10 likes
Replying to 20 different topics
Entering at least 40 topics
Reading at least 200 posts
Spend a total of 300 minutes (5 hours) reading posts
That way you know they’re trying to be an actual user and not just checking the place out
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Trust level 3 is not easy for everyone to maintain, I’ll admit… but there were valid points made about parents and teachers viewing the forum. I guess it just didn’t occur to me that Flowlab was meant to be primarily an educational tool, I just thought it was a fun and easy way to make games. But I respect the desire to keep the place looking professional to outsiders.
The lounge should be available for anyone who wants to join it for the right reasons, not if they’re going to use it to troll or post offensive content… and I’m okay with keeping it hidden and only viewable if you have clicked an option to enable it. That way a casual passerby would only see posts about games.
For newer users, the option would be off by default. They should have to manually enable it.
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I just like 50 posts a day, old or new but mostly new replies to keep regular, then I also usually post useless messages like these to keep my reply count average. This makes it so I cannot ever lose Trust Level 3 
EDIT: I also edit a post of my old or new to keep the edit streak goin’
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For those who think that Discourse forums are always supposed to be serious and 100% on topic… a few clips from my last forum:
Community Content was essentially the “off topic channel”. Now, while the description does say that it’s supposed to be stuff related to the game…
They had silly counting games, word association games, memes, songs, poems, fanfiction, etc. All of them would oftentimes veer wildly off topic from the game, but nobody cared as long as it was in the Community section and stayed out of the serious topics.
And no, this was not a forum frequented by mostly kids.
A demographic poll of the age and gender of the forum’s users:
Minimum age to be on that forum was 13, but I very rarely met anyone there who was younger than 20. Adults can be silly and immature, too… and they definitely get into countless childish arguments on a regular basis (which is why that forum had to have like 12 moderators just to keep the peace on an average day).
Surprisingly (or perhaps not so surprisingly), most of the drama came from the regular topics, not the off topic ones.
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The roblox dev forum and the aseprite forum both also have similar categories.
I strongly suggest to look at how the Roblox Dev Forum is set up (made with discourse too) whenever you have time for it @grazer.
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I have 0 problem with this. Again, I don’t see why the people fought all this, since their primary argument was it flooding the forums, which this changes nothing… But whatever, I’m happy with this.
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When I first saw this, I was against the idea of putting the only official Off-Topic channel behind a trust-wall, since I thought it’d block well-meaning users from getting to know or have fun with the community.
Then I realized that’s probably for the best, since lets be honest more people probably end up embarrassing themselves on those annoying threads then anywhere else on the forums, and now i’m not sure what to think.
I will say this though: We really need a second poll after this asking the community if they believe “Community off-topic channels” should be banned with the existence of the official one, since I am on that bandwagon all the way. (Due to redundancy and all that)
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Just use the PMs for those 50 days. If you can’t do that, then i’d say that sounds more like a you problem to me.
Excuse me sir, but did you just insult review threads?
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I don’t think anyone embarrassed themselves on there unless you have personal experiences, but we do use to chat about our daily life (sometimes), memes, and other family friendly non flowlab stuff. Which from my point of view it doesn’t seem to be hurting anyone, but I guess it is.
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Am I embarrassing myself when I talk about how I couldn’t afford to finish college? Or when I mention that I had zero coding experience before I joined Flowlab? Or when I talk about how I was always into video games and other “nerdy” kind of stuff?
If so… I’m okay with that. I like to keep it real. 
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And it specifically clarifies that private messages don’t count, so…
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