I've seen quite a few forums fall apart after going fully private. Do not do a major paywall unless you want to see your poster population shrink down.
Also frankly from the perspective of a Cow if I know I have an active thread I would be far more paranoid if it was hidden from me. I imagine many would drive themselves crazy. I bet Null would get emails from people who ranted and raved that they were being harassed by Kiwifarms who didn't even have a THREAD or much less a single post about them.
This would be Null's correspondence. Schizo strangers telling Null that Kiwifarms is trying to rape/murder them and he needs to make it STOP.
My suggestion is going to be one that people won't like at all. I would say hide away all Inactive Threads and only bring them back if the Cow in question decided to be a public figure again.
Let me make it clear I don't think Byuu's alleged death can be blamed on Kiwifarms whatsoever. He was clearly a mentally ill person and I would have done the same thing Null did because I wouldn't want to be accused of accepting bribes via cryptocurrency. But if Byuu's thread had been put away earlier then the nutcase couldn't have freaked out on what was then one of the least interesting threads of the forum.
Yes I know, people will be mad. But unfortunately if this forum survives Null has to have the defense that users are only commenting on active Public Figures. The way I see it there's no difference between mocking an A-List Celebrity and mocking someone who can't stop tweeting and posting shit videos online. I'll concede though I'm not a lawyer and it would be a major pain in the ass to move threads around.
Also and I really hate this thought, but if a lolcow is suicide baiting online then just lock the damn thread for the time being. Better to act like Suicide is no joke then have these assholes claim a forum killed someone because someone wrote "Do a flip faggot!"
