not because the people in them were bothered by the traffic level

Sorry -- I didn't mean to imply there was a bother. Just that it was a drive for consolidation of low-traffic threads, and if they hadn't been low-traffic, it wouldn't have happened.

I get that Natter can be a lot to search through, but I don't see a solution. I think anyone who posts there at all skips over lots of stuff everyday that is not of interest to them.

Knowing that adding any thread increases traffic, I don't think we should add any thread unless there is overwhelming support for it. There are basically three Natter threads as it is and another increase of that type of volume is not what we need.

How many TV threads do we think we want? I'd rather start knowing X new threads was the (bullshit consensus) limit and try to come up with the best way to use that X, than to have 45 show threads proposed and try to whittle down from that.

In the past, we haven't had more than three shows with their own thread at once. Does that model work? Or should we do three (or four, or two) with their own threads, plus another three (or whatever) for genres (i.e., reality, cop shows, soap operas)?

I'm sorta with LJ here. Since we don't have any ME shows coming up, I would like us to have some focus OTHER than natter. I would like to know how much addition people were comfortable with before proposing anything.

Personally, I would love an OC thread. I think.

Thing is, there's been a bullshit consensus for a while that this board and community can't coast indefinitely on the remnants of the ME-verse. (Feel free to correct me if y'all think I'm wrong.)

Without content to haggle over on a regular basis, do we become nothing more than a social community? Not to imply that the social aspects of B.org are inappropriate, but our origins were in snarky tv talk, and I for one would like to cling to that, to the extent practicable.

The problem, of course, is that without new ME-verse episodes to discuss, our interests are widening and fracturing. Some people want to talk about the OC, others Alias, others Everwood or Joan or Stargate. I don't know that we'll ever get a clear mandate that any one of these shows deserves its own thread or official community imprimatur of approval. What bound us together was the Buffyverse, and that's gone, for the purposes of this discussion.

I don't have an answer, but I do have some questions about what we want to do next. Who do we want to be? Do we want to attract new blood? Do we want to expand the topic of conversation to include everything (or more things) Buffistas find interesting? Do we want to keep our scope more controlled (and the traffic more controllable) by limiting official topics?

And what are the physical limitations? ita mentioned the question of not needing a dedicated server in the future: can that be resolved with code, or does it mean we need less traffic?

I'm with amych in that I don't see the value of discussing what new tv threads to create BEFORE there is a clear demand for it.

Question: is all of this just a way of trying to exert some control over how Buffistas transforms when there is no more ME tv to drive discussion? Because if so, I'm not convinced that changing the board will change the outcome: we'll still be ME-less, there will still be sadness on some fronts, and tv viewage will go on.

[eta: cross posted with Suela, who clearly got to the heart of the matter]

Personally I don't think we need special threads for discussion of tv shows that don't generate much analysis. OC gets its snark on, but I don't see extended discussions about the growth of the characters, etc. Whereas Buffy & Farscape continue to be discussed even though they aren'tairing new episodes.

can that be resolved with code, or does it mean we need less traffic?

In theory it can be resolved with code. And when it is -- go nuts (I think that thread proliferation fractures the community too, but that's just subjective). But it's not resolved, and to pretend otherwise is investing ahead of income.

If someone wants to propose TV thread(s), I think they should go ahead and do it. I'm not sure what having the discussion here accomplishes, except providing a means for it to last forever.

Well, I'm not sure if this is actually a good idea, but how about two threads, a genre TV thread (Alias, Stargate, etc.) and a teen soap thread (OC, JofA, Everwood)?

ETA: This is not a formal proposal.

I still don't understand the problem with seeing what people want before we decide whether it's even worth proposing, never mind actually proposing.

I still don't understand the problem with seeing what people want before we decide whether it's even worth proposing, never mind actually proposing.

Me either. I like Teppy's idea, and think those are good guidelines, but we make new threads to serve the population of the board. Might as well see what the population's most interested in.

I like the idea of a poll to determine what we watch and would like to talk about, and decide from there. It could be something along the lines of:

Which of the following shows do you think you would enjoy discussing as part of the buffistas.org community?

• The O.C.
• Joan of Arcadia
• Alias
• 24
• Stargate
• Smallville
• Charmed
• Gilmore Girls
• Everwood
• Six Feet Under
• "Brilliant but Canceled" (I think this should be a new thread. Insert My So-Called Life, Freaks and Geeks, The Tick, etc. discussion. But that's for another time to discuss.)
• Other shows (fill in the box)

If we don't have convenient poll-making capabilities here, I'd be willing to set something up with basic forms on my own webserver, and compile votes for discussion. If you are all willing to trust me. Based on the voting and comments, we can consider whether we want to make combined whitefonted threads or Angel, Buffy, Firefly-type single-show threads, or do nothing at all, let b.org become a primarily social environment, and discuss other shows in LJ communities (as we are already doing for Joan of Arcadia.)