Has a thread not dedicated to VMP gone off track due to a VMP discussion? It feels like a little odd (and maybe disingenuous) for someone to complain about VMP being discussed in a thread dedicated to that topic. There are multiple jazz threads -- it would be obnoxious if I were to wade into one of those discussions, tell everyone that jazz was a dead art form, that the people who listen to it are out of touch and demand that all the jazz discussions be limited to a single thread so that I do not have to see so many of them.
I had been under the impression that this was going to be a community-led vinyl enthusiast forum. If a bunch of members of that community enjoy having a handful of different discussions about a specific vinyl club then let them. If you don't enjoy those discussions then don't take part, but it feels dangerous to administratively throttle those discussions because some people don't like the club in question. Honestly, this whole conversation has made me question whether I want to be a part of this community going forward -- it feels like the "cool kids" with hundreds of posts are deciding what perspectives are going to be embraced by *their* club. What is this garbage about "giving free advertising to VMP"? Is the mission of this forum to harm VMP in retaliation for shutting down their forum, and we are going to be admonished if we have something good to say about VMP? Would it be so awful if *both* this forum and VMP (and other record clubs) were wildly successful going forward? If people were able to discuss what they liked and what they didn't, and VMP maybe saw some of that feedback and improved their service accordingly? When this forum was started, I recall at least one founder stating that this was not intended to be an anti-VMP, but a broader community that included VMP members and would eventually grow into something better (and healthier) than where we came from. I couldn't agree more, and I also think that artificially limiting VMP-focused discussions is antithetical to that goal.