There's been plenty simps in skelly's thread,
I don't agree with a lot of the criticism I am seeing in respect to your moderation (which I think has been overall very fair, albeit perhaps a bit too lenient at times), but I also have to say I don't agree with you on this point. The way these two threads panned out couldn't be more different. One is a legendary thread concerning a two-time LOTY winner, and the other has been a complete dumpster fire though much of its existence (with seemingly no end in sight).
And I think there's a reason for that...
There
were a
few genuine Rekieta simps in his thread, early on after his thread was moved out of Multimedia, but I think their number was overall insignificant, and haven't seen one in a good long while now. I attribute a lot of what you saw early on to a sense of confusion over the fact the guy that was once lionized by the Farms ended up becoming a major lolcow in his own right. IOW, what you saw there was inertia from Weebwars. Early on, some people just weren't paying attention and didn't want to initially accept that everything once widely believed about Nick was a lie, and that he was a massive degenerate all along.
The thing about interia is, it eventually runs out. As it finally did for Nick. What little disagreement there was, early on, completely dried up after the arrest and the CPS report leaking. It was a watershed moment. I haven't really seen anybody seriously try to outright defend Rekieta in his thread in over a year now. Again, not that there was ever that many to begin with. Probably because you would have to be a seriously socially maladjusted person to do that now. Nick is, unquestionably, a massive lolcow (among other, much worse, things).
There is no such consensus when it comes to Aaron, and I don't think there will be any time soon. Not as long as Nick is a factor. In general, there's been far more people willing to defend Aaron in this thread than there has been people willing to defend Nick in his. Indeed, I think the number of people here who would defend Aaron, at to some degree, outnumber the people who outright despise him.
Right now, the arguments against having an active Aaron specific thread, as I see it, are these:
1. Aaron is boring as fuck 90% of the time. As far as lolcows go, he sucks. He just does. He would not have even gotten this thread, if not for Nick. Since you unlocked this thread, what has been posted about him that's actually funny? Jack shit. The coaching shit? Again? Give me a break. This thread isn't 335 pages because Aaron is so goddamned amusing. It's at 335 pages because of constant neverending infighting.
2. In the 10% of the cases where he is actually interesting, it's usually in relation to something involving Rekieta. And those instances would be just as on-topic to discuss in the Rekieta thread (i.e. the ongoing HRO crap, as it applies against Nick). For anybody who wants to be super anal retentive about where certain discussions go, the Melton portion of the HRO could conceivably be discussed in Melton's thread.
3. For better or worse, Aaron operates in opposition to the far worse Rekieta, so yes... he's going to get cut at least some slack because of that, whereas very few people (understandably) want to cut the fucking child doser any amount of slack. Because of how awful of a person Nick is, it's completely understandable to me why people would want to see Aaron hand Nick some Ls.
4. Too many of Aaron biggest critics here ARE Melton simps, and... tbqh... fuck Melton
and his simps.
As long as these conditions exist, I think you are gonna continue to have issues with this thread.
Which brings me to...
tbh close this thread again, its going nowhere.
If it's too much of a PITA to moderate, I think you can make a pretty solid case for locking it and then reassessing the situation
after the bullshit between Nick and Aaron is finally over. Whenever the hell that happens. Or until Aaron does something really noteworthy on his own, that's completely separate from Rekieta. In the meantime, move the Dabbleverse thread out of PG, into Community Watch, and direct people there.
That would be be my vote. Which I suppose is basically a hybrid of the two options in the above poll.
I wouldn't purge this thread outright though because:
1. BG's OP is really well written.
2. Aaron
could end up becoming a major cow in his own right someday, instead of the D-tier one he is now. You never know.
Overall, in hindsight, and having thought about, I think the creation of this thread was premature. It was created before the Quover implosion. At a time when it looked like Aaron was gonna be a major ally of Rekieta, and there was was gonna be plenty of milk from him functioning as a Balldoguard. It was an anticipatory creation. I understand why, and under what context, it was created, but things soon and clearly went in a different direction from what was actually expected of Aaron.