Micros have special properties that make them both popular to play, and unpopular to mod. It is such a curiousity, the likes of which Alice has never seen through her Looking Glass. As a player they offer:
As a mod they offer:
It shouldn't be so surprising that the micro queue could end up tagged, "empty mod queue", then, when you think about such things.
The mod queue isn't actually empty, right this second. Right this second, it is offering a Nightless Jester game and a Post Restriction game. There is nothing wrong with either of those, I'm probably going to re-iterate that about eleven times. But it gives me some pause. Obviously these are both to varying extents niche games. I actually have specific reasons I might be interested in the Post Restriction game, and I can't sign up for any type of game right this second anyway due to upcoming V/LA, so this is not a whine thread, let me tell you. But it gives me some pause. I think, "what if, one day, MoI, the majestic beautiful beast that maybe doesn't exist anymore but maybe, somewhere MoI does exist, what if he comes back, and he decides, I want to play a mafia game, I want to try this stuff out again, I want to light up pops's world, but I want to start with something light, where's a small basic game?" And the choices are jesters and post restrictions.
The micro queue is not the only setup firing micros, of course. The "real" micro queue is the newbie queue, which is always clipping along at a good pace. SE demand for the newbie queue is very high (although I've noticed replacements are a perpetual problem, there's an overdue replacement request in there right now) largely because people like micros. Probably this should continue because the newbie queue is important and keeping lots of shepherds around for the sheep is good. But if my fictitious MoI has to wait in a long line that might do him no good.
There are also other queues where mods are allowed to mod micros. Three such queues! There could be four if Untrod Tripod would let me mod 2 scum 5 VT mountainous and label it a Large Theme but he just won't be cool about it. But the normal queue, mini theme queue, and open queue often don't have micros queue'ed even though they are allowed (I see no such games in queue, or waiting in line, on a quick check). This is because they are allowed to run other sizes, and those modsided detriments to running a micro still apply. Open queue is the queue most likely to fire a micro, and it's not coincidental that it's the queue where mods are most likely to run a setup they didn't design themselves.
For the normal queue there is also the whole: "You may run a game that qualifies as a Micro in the Mini Normal queue, but you must have the prerequisite experience to run a Micro and it will only count as running a Micro for experience."
Which if I had to come up with any semblance of productivity in my postwall I would speculate should be rephrased or removed. Even if the policy stands, I will say, when I toyed with the idea of modding something months back, I thought, ok maybe I will try something very small and basic, and I saw that line and thought, oh no, I'm not sure exactly what this means but it sounds like modding a 9p that went through the NRG is the awful against-all-recommendations thing to do to the site. But now if anything it really seems to me that supply and demand would call for fewer people to be dissuaded from running a micro.
I am probably one of the bad people, I am currently modding an 11p but I join some micros. So possibly my own playing/modding ratio demonstrates the weird micros-are-player-sided bias. I worry for every micro that is getting instahammered like a cockroach, there's a micro that several people would have wanted to play, but that never actually got designed, queued, or modded and so therefore there were joys never had. I also think quite possibly that people playing and enjoying lots of micros can enhance everyone's enjoyment of minis and larges; minis and larges could be more manageable and fewer of them could manage to drive themselves off a cliff if people go into games familiar with eachother due to micro Y or micro Z.
Everyone go queue micros in the Normal queue and Theme queue please. Every time you don't a fairy dies.