I went with this:

Give GW a mainsite (gaming-related or not), and keep it under gamingw.net

But at this point I really don't care anymore. Just get a good, long lasting mainsite up that is actually related to what GW is supposed to be about (which is showing off crappy RPG Maker games indie games and user submitted content).

I've never been a fan of putting it under a new domain name. Why should we? This domain name is perfectly fine.

I would also like to point out that there are a lot of people on this site who come here simply to post their game and then leave, or only check back to see feedback. They do not come into this forum (they probably don't even know that this is the general forum).

The only people who really post are those who no longer make games (for the most part), so obviously most of the posts you get are going to be negative.

I think the main site should make it easier for people to get feedback on their games, easier to showcase their games and easier for people to play their games. The forums just aren't a good place to do this. The posts in most of the game topics are like "I'll play it later" or "Nice game." It's hard for people to find posts by the original author and it's hard for people to know when a game is updated. A system that makes managing game releases, separating suggestions from general posts, complete control of comments / suggestions that are posted on the game (delete / hide spam posts), the owner of the game should have complete control over that page; he shouldn't have to wait for a moderator to come to his game page and clean it up, the ability for users to submit bugs in an organized way, and a way for the author to update the game with patches and other content. People should be able to subscribe to updates to a game series that they like. People should be able to write reviews that look good; don't just give users a text field and let them write a wall of text.

It isn't just about having a main site, it's about having a main site that's worth having. Who cares what all of the veteran users think, they're only here to troll; the main site isn't for them. They aren't going to use it. Let them have the forums. Make a main site that works for developers.

The main site is how I found out about the forum. So, yeah a worthwhile main site would benefit the forums by being an avenue for new members.

I'm completely apathetic towards the name. I think it should just be whatever attracts members that will stick around. Since I figure just keeping the original name would be easier. I voted for that.

A suggestion here: integrating the concept of a mainsite into the forums itself. Not only will it have the legitimacy of a mainsite with all its perks such as reviews and resasauruses (rawr!), but it adopts more of a community feel. Someone suggested this waaay back when, but I still like the idea. Everyone w/o membership can get a vanilla premade profile but at least link their games and other resources, and people with membership can get additional benefits, etc. etc...

Why can't we just have a simple mainsite that highlights shit from the forum, and leave it as simple as that? Songs, threads with cool drawings them, interesting things of artistic or gaming related things. That way, people don't have to slog through the countless couchfiend topics to get to interesting things, and people who rarely go outside of one branch of the forums can just check the mainsite to see if someone has started an art thread worth looking at or a thread about an album release?

That way the site is 100% community-centric but doesn't rely on people HAPPENING to stumble across good threads. People from both inside and outside the community can check out the best threads/games/arts/musics/pictures of moms. People outside the community will go "hmm this is an interesting album I'll sign up to post comments" and people from inside the community will have no trouble finding topics from forums they don't frequent/are too lazy and stupid to find on their own.

The forum stays intact, the community stays intact, and people can get some more feedback on their shit.

It's not like it's hard to sign up for GW, if outsiders find a link to something they like, they'll sign up to comment on it. And so long as we're not DOUCHECLOCKS about it they will stick around.

Funny thing is 14 year olds generally tend to generate pretty good content. I churned out loads of chipset edits when I was 14...back when I had loads of time on my hands. I just never posted them.

Also, Kaempfer's post. It's prolly the easiest thing to do, and at least you have a place to show off resources.