So… today there were at least 24 new draft threads posted to the forums. Unsurprisingly, most of them have not been replied to yet. I took a look at a couple, and they generally seem to be conceptually weak (at least, the ones I saw were).
In preparation for the eventual summer flooding of members, I was thinking of the feasibility of implementing the following changes to the draft forums:
1. First-time authors (i.e., authors who have not yet authored a successful mainsite work of their own. Co-authored articles will not count for this.) must have a concept cleared in the Ideas and Brainstorming forum before they can make a draft thread soliciting feedback.
2. Concepts presented in I&B can only be officially cleared by successful authors or staff members.
3. Draft threads that are created by first-time authors without a corresponding I&B thread will have a redirect/instructions notice posted, and then locked.
I feel like this will help alleviate the workload for the Forum Crit team, as well as more effectively emphasize the importance of gauging audience interest at the conceptualization stage rather than just immediately going into a draft. We get a lot of newcomers who jump the gun when it comes to writing drafts, and those works eat up a lot of time for the Forum Crit team.
Additionally, this will help give the Forum Crit team some more time to devote to addressing ideas threads, since those have gotten pretty backlogged recently.
I thought this might be good for just the summer, but if it works well, maybe have it be a permanent implementation? I dunno.
Thoughts?