The point is that this forum has too many subforums. Most are inactive. That means something else should be done.
Transcix asks why expand our focus, and I say to avoid the clusterfuck we see going on here now. We should be open to what's going on out there on a wider basis, even if only to shit on it.
If you don't reach people, you're basically repeating your message in the dark among a few fanatics. That's when the inactivity and clusterfucking starts.
Six = too many? Simply condensing things probably won't boost activity. I agree.
Well, whatever reason it is that we want to expand focus, the easiest way to do it would be to do just that - expand focus. Have a board where we talk about whatever the fuck there is to talk about, whether it is something worthwhile or not. General chit-chat, arguments, trolling, stuff that might be interesting or might be best not considered at all, whatever. Given that this means an inevitable reduction in quality in favour of quantity, the solution would be to simply separate the high quality from the rest.
You could do this in a few ways. If you want to minimise subforums then you could simply go:
-high quality, low quantity
-low quality, high quantity
-music
[-trash]
Audiofile and Metal and Classical could be fused since audiofile isn't really a subforum, just a collection of links pertaining to music, and then everything else sorted into the Quality and Quantity boards. [the trash section basically being where most of News and Commerce are put, and various other posts that would generally be considered for deletion, and users can sort through in case anything was wrongly thrown out]
In transitioning from the current system to the old one, it would basically go:
Audiofile + Metal + Classical -> Music
Chasm -> Quantity
News + Commerce -> Trash
And then everything else is done manually. If Trash threads should be in Quantity, or Quantity threads should be in Quality, or whatever, then users mark the threads accordingly, and mods can move it if the request seems reasonable (most of the work would be user based, rather than mod). After this, threads posted in Quality will generally be [META]ed down to Quantity to preserve the integrity of the board.