MTG

1. If you want a proxy community to be a thing, make it. Ultimately it's up to the hosts of the instance if that's something they're comfortable with.

2. Stop using "shilling" as a catchall for something you don't like. A "shill" is a very specific type of person, namely someone that takes money in exchange for actively advocating for a company/entity. Some people just don't feel comfortable with proxies and that's ok. Calling them "shills" is just edgelordy, unimaginative instigating.

I don't really understand why you'd need a community? What is it that people discuss about proxies specifically that couldn't be in a main forum? I'd suggest just posting threads about what you want to talk about and see how they go down.

I use proxies pretty liberally. I even make custom cards for my kids. Since the Pinkertons episode, I haven't bought a new mtg card, but I'm always looking to replace my proxies with used cards and support my LGS in the search for them.

I am not sure that there is a need for a whole community to be centred around proxies. What would be the purpose of it? I do think however it would be nice to have a discussion about some good resources for proxies and tokens.

I guess it depends what you mean. If you're suggesting proxies as an alternative when price comes up or whatever I think that's fine, we don't need to ban the P word like reddit used to do. I think in-depth reviews or guides to using counterfeit sellers would probably be better in its own community, not for legal or WotC reasons but more because it's very niche and would just be spam for 99% of people who just wanna talk about Magic

Personally, I'd love to have a community for proxies in the sense of the playtest card/digital alters/printed (DIY or via a printing service) style of proxies. I think that's pretty much totally inoffensive (in the sense that, people who don't like proxies don't have to subscribe to such a community, and it being here wouldn't alter their experience.) I love the custom treatments/digital alters/etc. that come out of the various proxy communities, and would definitely enjoy seeing it here. It's such a great form of creative expression and really enhances my interaction with Magic as a hobby.

As for whether or not to have a community for 'bootleg' style proxies, I would understand if the admins didn't want to host that sort of thing, for whichever reason, and personally I have no real interest in being active in such a community. But not because I think there's anything wrong with it, since most people just use them to be able to play with the cards that have had their value artificially inflated - so it also wouldn't bother me if such a community was here.

I know much of the printer/playtest proxy community is spread across Discord and Reddit, so I'm not sure if it would have a new 'home' here, or if it would be a smaller subsection of the wider community - which I guess would be the other factor in deciding whether there ought to be a community like that here.

You could always just make it yourself? Doesn't have to be on this instance, but not sure if there would be many people who would use it.