Instead of dealing with this shit every time we notice inactivity, I want to see hard activity lower limits, for market sections and off-topic sections.
This is good for two reasons - first of all it encourages experimentation. When you add a new section now you make a commitment to keep it effectively indefinitely and use valuable home-page space. That's pretty huge, and so it's hard to get a new section in. Removing the commitment would be beneficial in this case.
Second, it reduces inactive sections. I propose two sets of limits that should apply to all sections more than two months old, and be evaluated every month for every section (preferably automatically).
First tier limits:
--Market Upper Limit: X posts in a month or this market section is condensed
--Non-Market Upper Limit: Same, only not for market sections
Absolute Lower Limits:
--Market Absolute Limit: If a section, after failing the upper limit, at least once before, and then fails the lower limit, it's removed. End of story
--Non-Market Absolute Limit: Same, only not for market sections.
For a section to be removed it has to first be condensed, and then continue showing inactivity.
Calculating the limits should be a matter of examining post history in a multitude of sections and getting some sort of Posts/Month quota. Some tool should be available to automatically calculate the number of posts in a particular month, and at the end of it the admin team should quickly run over things and do what needs to be done.
If a section fails the upper limit but not the lower one repeatedly it stays condensed. If it fails the upper limit but later rebounds it gets a front page spot again. Basically this is objectively answering the question of what's important and what's not.
