On profile there is also Yahoo YAM information, no sense at all
Talk to the people who made SMF and who added that (I'm guessing) 15 years ago. I agree that this could be purged, but it's so extremely low priority it's probably never happening.
I don't think this is a phase. Or, if it is, then it'll mean when it's past that interest in FE is dying out.
Meh, it is. We've been at it for more than a decade now. Every now and then we get a spike in media attention which brings the RE zealots over, and eventually they get bored. The FE movement at large grows regardless of this pattern. But yes, ultimately the hope here is that interest
among a specific demographic dies out.
And the middle ground is people earn their place into those sections. And they don't do that by saying they believe the earth to be flat, they do that by showing they can debate sensibly in the sections they can see.
And who would the gatekeepers for that be? Bear in mind that (for example) you and I have extremely differing views on which contributors here are and are not sensible. If it were me choosing, most of the people who ask for more FE attention wouldn't get in - in effect, nothing would change. If you were choosing, then people like me wouldn't participate - nothing would change.
If you genuinely don't want RE input into those discussions then that's your prerogative of course, but then it does become somewhat of an echo changer.
I think you could be more generous with your assumptions about FE-on-FE discussions, at least the ones I alluded to participating in. The way you describe it, it sounds like you're imagining a room with a few people repeatedly saying "erf flat", "Ah, yes, quite!" to one another. Usually, it's much more heated than that, and the discussion focuses on
differences, not similarities. I'm sure many echo chambers exist (well, I know they do, and I've been banned from quite a few, lol), but I agree that those are not useful or interesting.
Indeed, this is why I think the ball needs to be in RE's court here. We get an excessive amount of threads from regulars who just discuss among themselves about how round they think the Earth is, and how much they agree with one another.
Finally: while this forum has its purpose, and the outreach it generates is super useful, I think you're mistaking a relatively small forum ran by FE'ers for the entirety of the FE movement. If you don't like this particular section of the movement, you have plenty of options already available. You could go on Twitter and talk at some of the FE'ers there (many are needlessly hostile and not willing to discuss at all, but some of them can be civil and informative). It all has its upsides and downsides, but there is a diverse selection of means of communication available to you.