Interesting comments gentlemen. As some of you are already aware, I'm also one of the website editors here at Armchair General. I'm very active on the Warfare HQ forums as I run that site as a full time job, but I'm less active on these forums (there are only so many hours in a day).
You guys have already hit on some of the important and more interesting aspects of this proposed merger, thus I will leave it to you all to continue that debate. You're bringing out some good points and I would encourage you to continue to provide us with constructive feedback. It does help us.
Now, allow me to speak to some of the wargame-specific questions that have been raised here. To do that, I feel it would be appropriate for me to give you a tiny bit of background on WHQ and it's members.
Warfare HQ is currently about four years old and was founded by me. The staff consists of hand picked volunteers who have experience in their respective wargame. The Warfare HQ staff are not simply "mods" for the forum, far more importantly, they function as "Section Leaders" for our main website. They run entire portions of the website, set up and run major wargaming events, post news articles, AAR's, reviews, previews, and administer W.A.R.S. (the official WHQ ladder system for wargamers). In addition to this they frequently act as liaisons between our organization and developers/publishers. In short, they have more in common with the senior Armchair General staff than they do with the forum moderators here. Not better or worse, but they do have a somewhat different perspective in general.
The Warfare HQ membership has been carefully cultivated over the years, specifically for the purpose of mentoring and developing serious wargamers. There are many sites that cater to titles like Operation Flashpoint, Call of Duty, and Command & Conquer style games--but we aren't one of them.
All of our wargame forums are directly linked to sections on the main Warfare HQ webpage. We only support a very select group of hand picked games, but our aim is to be a premiere destination for these titles. The point is, our wargame sections consist of much more than a simple forum where people can talk about a particular title. We do not support a wargame unless it meets fairly specific criteria, has several dedicated volunteer staff members, a full section on the main webpage, W.A.R.S. support, etc. Our members are not your average wargamers, even among websites with a similar theme. A large percentage of our members have extensive experience in the military and a significant number of us (myself included) have actual combat experience or served as instructors. It's fair to say our members tend to be "hardcore" wargamers, better known as grognards. There are other wargame organizations out there who are more relaxed than we are and tend to stick to lighter wargame fare, but that's simply not our cup of tea. Warfare HQ is primarily oriented toward those wargamers with a serious interest in military history and tactics.
Okay, enough on that.
How would this merger work? In short, I am the chief architect of the Warfare HQ forums, although I am keenly interested in constructive feedback from both the staff and the general membership. If I didn't listen to suggestions and ideas, WHQ never would have become as popular as it is. I layout the structure and organization, I am the graphic artist, and I have the final word on the overall direction of the organization at WHQ. Brian, Eric and I have known each other for quite a while and have a very close working relationship. We're pretty much on the same sheet of music when it comes to wargaming, in fact, Brian and Eric met at Warfare HQ and things have simply progressed from there.
Now some of this may smack of elitism to some, and it might be fair to say that is true to a small degree. As I said, the Warfare HQ crowd are not your average wargamers as many have or are commanding military units from around the world. In contrast to ACG, we also have a very high percentage of Australians, Canadians, and Europeans among our ranks (about 50% to be exact). This does tend to add a very different character to our daily discussions. Warfare HQ was not created for the purpose of trying to be all things to all people, rather it was tailored for a specific design. It is fair to say the members there would react very negatively if they perceived I was attempting to "water down" our primary mission.
The announcement of the forum merge was authored by both Brian and myself. In hindsight, we may have miscalculated as to how much enthusiasm there would be for such a merger as we are currently discussing. We could have possibly gone about it in a different manner, but it's really a moot point now. The main question is: will Warfare HQ and Armchair General compliment each other, or will there be competing interests. That's a very difficult question and the answer appears to be somewhat more elusive than we originally thought. While we are sorting through all of this, we are asking the members on both site to please refrain from adopting a "us vs. them" attitude. That will not be constructive no matter which way things go.
As to the forum structure itself, we do indeed have a draft design (that took about three months to brainstorm), but it is not set in stone. In short, everything would be located within a single VBulletin, but major areas of interest would be divided by category. Due to the very large number of sub-forums that currently make up both ACG and WFQ, there would indeed be some heavy duty consolidation that would occur. We had the same problem at Warfare HQ, and I have done much over the last several months to restructure our forums and consolidate things with an eye toward the eventual merge. People don't like change, and as I have been running forums for about 6 years now, I'm well aware that not everyone would be pleased with the new structure. However, there simply is no way to change things while keeping them the same!
You feedback is useful to us and is helping us to determine the best direction to proceed.