Apologies for breaking it down as such, but felt it needed in order to address certain points and break the argument apart into specific sections.
TL;DR: Badly.
Not only has the existence of the Mall itself caused confusion, it's basically taken a small chunk of what was originally the spirit of OVP from the Treehouse. While that in and of itself isn't bad, I loved OVP, it's a hollow resurrection of it. Because the scope of "Lifestyle" was far too confusing for people, it was further narrowed into three subjects that could easily and most likely fit into The Treehouse. This unnecessarily segregates these three topics from the Treehouse and removes some potential of seriously enjoyable posts in the Treehouse, which in turn degrades the quality of the Treehouse content. Because we're funneling these three specific topics from there, we've lost out on an entire category of posts that are serious in the Treehouse, which I think further descends the Treehouse into it's own sordid madness. This madness does not increase the quality of the threads in the Treehouse and removing content allows that to spread within there unchecked and does not make me want to visit there. I liked the mall-like threads in the Treehouse; they brought me in and allowed me to have a browse at whatever else caught my eye because they are largely serious threads that don't really call for a whole lot of seriousness.
The fact is, whatever forum that ends up being voted on each Forum Frontier go-around is going to take away activity from The Treehouse. The Treehouse is supposed to be a, in lack of better words, a crap shoot of miscellaneous topics that otherwise wouldn't fit into the mold of another forum. Take Science, for example, which seems to be a popular item on the agenda in this upcoming Forum Frontier. Any science based topics that would have been in The Treehouse will now be taken away.
Unfortunately, if any forums are going to become permanent it is going to degrade the amount of topics that can be made in The Treehouse (i.e. the more forums that stay, the more diverse forums we'll have, the less of a need we'll have for The Treehouse.) If you truly enjoyed those topics in The Treehouse, then there should really be no reason why you can't continue them in The Mall. In fact, it should be a driving force for you to want to visit The Mall. Nothing has changed in post quality with the posts being in The Mall; you are still having "serious threads" about different things in life, but they "don't really call for a whole lot of seriousness."
By taking them out of the Treehouse you make them "important" on their own. This does draw a crowd, but it's not one that I honestly like. Because they are outside of the Treehouse they become focused topics and lose the natural chit-chat status of the Treehouse, which actually chills activity within them. Now it feels like you actually have to have something worthwhile to say, or have something that distinguishes you from the rest of the posts. Threads slowly rot and die as all but a few niche members who care about those topics post in them, and eventually even those will grow tired and post somewhere else.
I'd have to disagree with this point. As an active member of The Mall, I can safely say that there is still a natural chill chit-chat status here than what you'd see in The Treehouse otherwise. Granted you'll still see a "post-and-go" mentality here and there, but you're going to run into that anywhere on PC (including The Treehouse for that manner.) Any post that any member makes in
any forum is worthwhile, as it varies from person to person on the impact.
You're going to have threads rot and die anywhere on the site, including in The Treehouse. The difference between The Treehouse and any other forum on this site though is that considering how diverse your topic can be in The Treehouse, you're not going to see these events as easily as new threads are constantly going to made (The Treehouse currently ranks as one of the top thread publications on the site.)
The three subjects we designated for the Mall are not sufficient to sustain activity enough to warrant it's own forum, or even a subforum of the Treehouse! They are too narrow, and widening the scope of allowable threads merely waters it back down to being confusing, or just a narrower form of Other Voting Polls.
I'm still a believer than the three subjects can survive on it's own. If we can have a forum dedicated to computers and it's encompanying technology - which in itself is a small window of topic creation - than I think it's fair to say with all the types of food out there, including how it's prepared/cooked, all the different ways fitness can be applied to life whether it's working out at the gym or sports, and fashion where it can include what you wear and what the hottest trends are going on, I think it can survive as it's own forum. But again, this is my opinion and you're allowed to have yours.
Furthermore, modding one more member is a questionable endeavor. Even if we have one such member whom staff can indeed trust, I don't think they will be able to fix what the Mall never had from the start. There's just not sufficient interest, even when people post there occasionally, and forums based on better ideas were closed for having activity levels similar to that. WoPC comes to mind as does Member Encyclopedia. Both were closed for being "too inactive/lacking interest" and these arguably had not much better post rates, and even better reasons to exist than The Mall does. In the end The Mall has more negatives against it than others closed for similar lack of activity reasons, and plenty of people will likely agree with me that those sections did not deserve to die if it weren't for their lack of ability to survive the lulls in forum-wide traffic across slower seasons and still maintain a decent rate of posts and replies.
Just curious what makes you think there isn't sufficient interest? In my opnion, while yes the thread count could be a bit higher, there has been a good amount of talk and discussion going on within the forum. I think a major cause of this is the ambiguity of the forum, which when cleared up will garner more attention and interest to post. While I think the thread creation could be better, I don't think it's any case for red alarms to go off as the post count is still good.
First Generation has more threads than the Mall does and that's such a relatively low-traffic place that it's easily the only Official forum that could be termed that staff could tolerate; but that one at least has a very logical and organizational reason to exist. It's not like H-Staff is unfair about activity levels. But The Mall hasn't really served a very compelling purpose when it comes to organizing threads in a way that people can clearly classify where a thread goes. I get that The Treehouse is a catch-all bin; but there's no reason to extract all the things that are good about it and end up with what is effectively a "Recycle Bin" forum.
This argument can't really be made considering First Generation has been around a lot longer than The Mall so it really shouldn't be compared. In fact, if you really wanted to compare the two, than you're talking about
127 threads since November 2015 for First Generation compared to 108 threads in the course of 4 months for The Mall. If anything, than the forum has more potential than First Generation does. And again, I'll reiterate, I think the lower than wanted thread count is a result of the ambiguity of the forum's name and would be higher if that ambiguity wasn't in place.
Right now, there
is a clear cut way of where threads go for The Mall: if it's either food, fitness, or fashion related, it goes in The Mall. The issue is that when you have things like "post a picture of yourself" in The Treehouse - which, to put on the record, I contacted the moderators of that section to have it moved to The Mall for less ambiguity - than you're going to have problems.
It goes without saying, but I'm not meaning this to be an attack or anything. I understand the attachment to The Treehouse. However, although you don't want The Treehouse to become a "Recyle Bin" forum, it currently is that. Any topic that doesn't fit in a current forum will fall under The Treehouse. With the more forums that are created, the less topics are going to fit in The Treehouse. Although it does mean there would be change, that's not a bad thing as users of PokeCommunity would then be able to more easily find topics related to what they want to discuss about more. To put it bluntly, I think in the end what's going to happen is as more forums are made permanet, we're really not going to need The Treehouse anymore as a once broad category would then be divided into more specific categories. Ultimately, I think that's inevitably going to happen.
TL;DR - While The Treehouse is great now, with more permanent forums being added, we're going to eventually reach a point where we're not going to need The Treehouse anymore as a once broad category of topics has inevitably been divided into more specific forums for topics to go into. I.e. A huge recycle bin will be broken apart into a dozen recycle bins.