I disagree with removing TR from the wiki, and I also disagree with freezing with the verse. The option suggested by First Witch sounds better, though I would personally contend that 1 year and 1k posts is a bit too harsh - I would think knowing whether a user is a sockpuppet (or otherwise a troublesome user) would occur well before that point. For now, though, I would like to focus on the issues with deleting/freezing the verse.
The proposal here, if my understanding is correct, is that the problems that users have caused in TR threads will be mitigated by removing TR or preventing further TR threads. In essence, removing the platform that members are using to cause trouble will prevent further trouble by those members. This is an intuitive proposal, but the crux of all this is that I believe it's not actually true in the first place.
There's an analogue to be made here with a concept in criminology - namely, 'displacement' policies. In criminology, displacement policies are policies implemented into law to reduce crime rates by uniquely taking away access to areas in which crime rates are high. For example, if policy makers find that a particular string of nightclubs experience very high crime rates past 2am, they could aim to prevent further crime by issuing a mandatory close at 1am. Displacement policies are common, but as you may have picked up from the name that criminology researchers have applied to them, it's been found consistently that they don't actually reduce crime - they just 'displace' it. To elaborate: while taking away a particular area where crime occurs may reduce crime in that area, it proportionally increases crime in all surrounding areas, to the point that the overall crime rate does not decrease.
There are several noteworthy case studies on this concept. The 'Sydney Lockout Laws' in Australia were a famous example. In 2014, after an incident of night-time alcohol-fueled violence resulting in death in the Sydney CBD, a strict curfew was placed on all venues which sold alcohol in the CBD to prevent further incidents of alcohol-fueled violence. Longitudinal research into the lockout laws in the coming years found that violent crime attributed to alcohol use did notably decrease in the CBD - however, it proceeded to notably increase in all regions surrounding the CBD, resulting in the overall level of alcohol-fueled violence in Sydney not substantially decreasing (in the interest of fairness, I should note some studies suggested at least a small reduction in overall crime in this instance - but all noticed the same effect of crime displacement, and that the impact was far lower than what policy makers would have expected). There were also many similar research studies done regarding the COVID lockdowns in many different regions of the world. Reduced access to outside spaces consistently decreased incidents of violent crimes outside of the home in many regions of the world - but violent crimes inside the home increased proportionally, resulting in no substantial reductions in violent crime.
Having an analogue doesn't prove anything on its own, of course - analogies can be made to argue for just about anything without substance. But the reason I bring up this analogy is because I believe it's relevant here. The consensus among researchers regarding displacement policies is that they don't work because it isn't the platform someone is given that causes them to engage in deviant behaviour - it's factors related to the person themselves. The reason why crime rates overall don't tend to decrease when such policies are implemented is because people who would have engaged in deviant behaviour in one area (who have their access to that area taken away) will just proceed to engage in deviant behaviour in a different area. When you sit down and think about it, this is actually quite obvious; it's almost always the person, and factors such as their intentions, their personality, their cognitions, and whatnot, that causes a crime, not the place they happen to be in.
I would assert that this is quite relevant to the problem we have here. There is ultimately nothing special about TR as a verse that should necessarily make it more controversial than any other verse - rather, the problems come down to the fact that a lot of problematic users happen to engage with it. And furthermore, almost none of these users (to my memory) exclusively interacted with or caused problems for TR; the users who have caused problems on TR threads have also caused problems on all the other threads they've engaged with, including those for other verses. When they didn't have TR threads to attend to, they caused problems in threads for other verses. The only reason TR is notable here is because it was a converging point for many of these users. So to this, I have to ask - will getting rid of TR actually prevent further problems from these users? Will these users just stop being recurring problems for the staff and other users once they no longer have access to TR? Or will it just cause them to create more problems spread out elsewhere, problems which we will have to deal with at roughly the same rate? I would argue there is a strong precedent for the latter. The only precedent for the former is a common intuition that has consistently been shown to be false.
In passing, I would like to note there is a case to be made that certain specific problems are exclusive to the TR verse. For example, the excessive number of calcs. Calcs are (often) verse specific, and there have been a lot of feats calced for TR that have caused troubles. Given the verse-specificity of calculations, you could argue that this problem will go away when TR is removed. I have two contentions with this. For one, the reason why we are considering such heavy-handed action against TR in the first place is because of the problems with the users; I would not endorse something as extreme as blocking off access to a verse entirely on the basis of having a lot of calcs. Secondly, freezing the verse won't address verse-specific problems; it will only delay them. If there are a lot of feats to be calced, then those feats will still exist when the freeze is over (and if anything, there might even be more to calculate by the end of it). That's one example, but when you follow through on the line of reasoning on any other problems, you'll find that any verse-specific problems will exist after the freeze is over as much as they exist now. This would be a very heavy-handed approach for comparatively minor problems, and wouldn't even fix the problems in the long-term.
This is why I would be willing to discuss First Witch's suggestion instead. First Witch's suggestion partially accounts for the problems of the other approaches, because it acknowledges the problem as user-centric, not verse-centric. It is not TR that is causing problems - it is the people who are engaging with it that are causing problems, and this suggestion helps to focus on and filter out the more problematic users early. It doesn't fully fix the problem, as it doesn't address how these users might cause problems with other threads, but it does make it easier to keep track of them and to weed them out. Furthermore, it prevents us from needlessly taking away freedoms from reasonable, upstanding users who would legitimately bring improvements to the verse in a time where these improvements would otherwise not be possible. I would think that, with further refinement, this would be a plausible avenue to explore.
In conclusion, I disagree with removing/freezing the TR verse. I believe the main case for it is held up on a common intuition that has been demonstrated to be false, and that the weight of the evidence suggests that no substantial decrease in problems and rule violations will come about as a result of those changes. I also believe that, in the long term, the problems that are unique to TR as a verse will at most be delayed by these changes, and that it would only be a temporary and heavy-handed solution. I would be willing to give more credence to First Witch's suggestion, as it focuses on the regulation of user's conduct on TR threads rather than on the verse itself, and enables the verse to continue being improved in the coming months. However, I have similar concerns over whether it will just result in a displacement effect.
