may I chime in and address some points made here?
for starters, the "How to use this sub-forum" post in the Drafting Room says that "If your map thread sits around in the Drafting Room for over a month without an update, it will be considered abandoned and moved to the Scrap Heap (from which it can re-emerge at your request)." So we already have a rule in place here.
As for stickying maps in the Scrap Heap... it's just making more work for the CAs, when we should be doing more important things like giving feedback on active maps. Every half-hour that I spend trying to figure out how old maps are means one more day that i don't get around to checking army coordinates on a map that is ready to be quenched. Gimil and I have had a few sessions of cleaning up the foundry forums, and it can be tedious work... personally I find it far more efficient to give the mapmaker the responsibility of properly tagging his/her map, and PM'ing one of us when the it is time to move the map around. We're all pretty quick to respond to requests to have a thread moved. If a mapmaker splits for a few months and can't be bothered to add a vacation tag or tell us of their intentions to return, then I say stick it in the Scrap Heap as is.
The same goes for threads in Ideas and Drafts. Unless I spot something that is clearly where it shouldn't belong I will give the mapmaker some latitude to work his thread out, and let one of us know if it needs to be moved. Some threads in Ideas have a rough image, but there is no intention of that image becoming a working map project. And some threads in Drafts look like dung, but they are intended as map drafts. I think all of the CAs want to respect the intentions of the user posting these threads, regardless of the level of ability/talent.
And the original concern of this thread: nothing ever gets accomplished in the Ideas sub-forum. I would argue that this isn't entirely true - every now and then an idea is good and is turned into a draft, either by the original poster of the idea or somebody else who picked it up. Does this happen often? No. This isn't because the idea are all bad, but because there are a limited number of CC users with the time and ability to run a map through the Foundry.
The Map Ideas sub-forum was created to replace the 131 page disaster that was the
Map Ideas Thread. If you want to see a place where nothing gets accomplished, check out that thread. Ideas went there to die, because it was impossible to have any kind of intelligent discussion about every idea in one thread. Now each idea has a thread in which discussion can run it's course. When somebody says they want to see a Star Wars map, they can be told that copyright is an issue. When somebody asks to see a map of the Human Body, they can be directed to the current thread in Drafts. When somebody asks for a map of Middle Earth, they can be told that we used to have one but it was removed. These are all good things because it gives folks information they seek, which I consider to be something that is
accomplished.
