I don't wanna see it nuked, just re-formed. Rules in place not allowing for post seeking or advertising. It should be just for people looking to make friends, because as you are fully aware making friends as a zoo presents a greater challenge.
The personals section as it is would have to be functionally nuked, but I agree that something else could take its place. For example, groups exist on this website and I personally have never really engaged with them. I'm sure a lot of users either don't actually know they exist (because they just don't look at the header) or they just haven't bothered to check them out because they aren't particularly visible on the forum. The personals section could be replaced with a section for people to advertise their groups or something or some other kind of group-related integration. Though there's an argument to be made that there isn't a need for this on the forum since groups are easily accessible via the header of the site. But people don't even read the rules 99.99% of the time so odds are that would increase group engagement a lot. Granted, I don't know the statistics so maybe groups are super popular and I'm just living under a rock. Lol
But I think that hypothetical is a bit of a stretch because the personals section doesn't necessarily need something else to take its place as the purpose of the section (what warrants its existence) is fundamentally the problem in question, and ironically removing personals wouldn't remove the problem. The majority of people on ZV are into this as a fetish and the primary appeal for a lot of those people is the humans partaking in the act rather than the act of making love with an animal. This poll won't take that into account because 99.9% of the site's userbase just won't engage with it because they're too busy beating their meat and trying to hit up women or owners in DMs or whatever. The majority of the answers on this poll could be a resounding "yes, get rid of personals", but realistically it'll only be a few dozen people that actually partake in the vote and does not represent the majority whatsoever.
Considering the state of the site, there's absolutely no way in hell that the site would shift to cater less towards fetishists and more towards "genuine" zoophiles. The fetishism is one of the predominant focuses of the forum, if only because it is the majority, and alienating that crowd and attempting to reform the site wouldn't work without a revolt and there's a good possibility that it would spell the end of the site entirely... especially since sometimes it feels like this site could be on the verge of collapse any moment. Other zoophilia focused sites exist and those have plenty of their own issues even if they sound good in theory. Unfortunately the grass is always greener on the other side and the reality is always disappointing. I don't want to get too far out of the scope of this thread, but I suppose my point is that I sympathize with your sentiment. I've got some feelings (some rather strong) about each of the various sites that I've visited over the years, which admittedly isn't very many. But despite all of the issues I have with ZV this is the one I'll always end up coming back to because it's the most active and most of the friends I've made and continue to make have been through here.
The one "good" thing I can really say about ZV is that it really does provide a lot of perspective on why zoophilia is so frowned upon in society. Unfortunately, there is a very real reason zoophiles have a bad reputation, and I don't necessarily have any particular ideas or answers on how that could ever get addressed in a reasonable time frame. It's easy for us to distinguish between "true zoophilia" and fetishism but that level of distinction will never matter to the masses, and that fucking blows. This being one of the bigger zoo/bestiality sites means that you get a relatively unfiltered view on the type of people that involve themselves with this stuff, for better or worse. And the sad reality is that most of these people honestly do not generally have the best character. But no use crying over spilled milk, I suppose.
I agree with you ,tired of those people
The moment you get a dog, you become an owner.