OK-- I think I use the word mission because I work at a university and we use that word a lot...

For me, knowing what we all think our mission is would help me be able to make decisions on whether or not I think certain threads should be started. So if I know what everyone feels like, I feel like I will know what the right decision is, not just based on "I WANT TO DISCUSS THE OC NOW!!!", but based on what we think the board is about.

I also have to add that I think the word mission is mis-leading, and much as I love Buffistas, I don't think we are about to cure cancer or create world peace.

So, to me, our mission could be as simple as "To natter with other Buffistas in a snarky and usually polite manner"

I am not saying we have to codify something, just that I would like to get a handle on what the board is about in a post ME-verse world and help prevent us from being centerless. Some feel that we are already centerless and that is fine. I felt that we sentered on ME-verse, and with it gone, should try to articulate a new center.

cereal:

probably won't change my use of the board at all since

Which is kinda what I figured. If it does change things for me, I'll be pissed. Because I don't think things need changing.

If it doesn't change things, what was the point?

And when Serenity comes out, will we need a new mission?

If there aren't topic-specific threads, the topicy people will move off the board, and no one will be drawn in to replace them.

but there are topic threads, just not specific TV show threads.

Also, I wasn't saying I felt a lack, really. I am just more thinking of the future, and being able to articulate a mission would help me think of the correct "chunk" to start with.

I'm active in a mailing list organized around a pop culture icon of sorts but evolved into a little community, but when that icon went away, the list lost a lot of its vibrancy. It exists, but it doesn't, for one thing, grow, and it's just less than it was. I have a dread of that happening here, I guess.

Oh, dear. Yeah. I was on a very neat mailing list for Babylon 5 that was a great community until about three months after the last episode. Most people moved on to a different mailing list. Some of us just drifted away. Now, b.org is more complex than a mailing list, so there is at the least more here to serve as mass to push the inertia that will definitely keep this going for a while. The one thing I am not sure about is whether active force can be applied to said mass to keep it moving and not fall due to gravity. I'd like to think so. Sheer desire to keep the ties going and an established means of doing so exist. I think what we have here is a dither over details of how. On that, I'd say continuing to watch what the community seems to need and moving to do it when possible will do a fair bit.

What Sophia said.

I vote for the One True Thread approach! Whee anti-proliferationistas!

No, really, I'm not actually all that worried about it. And I'm giddy with dvd news, and the ME writers article, and it's making me think. You know, our ME staff haven't fallen off the earth. They haven't declared their muse dead and their pen passionless. I think we're going to have plenty to follow, and plenty of new blood, and plenty of intelligent discourse.

I think we're going to have plenty to follow, and plenty of new blood, and plenty of intelligent discourse.

discreetly cuts off the valve for the laughing gas...

Liese, you are all hopped up on optimism and good feeling. How did your weekend with the sponsors go?

Ah. It is not the laughing gas you should be after. It is the cold medicine. Because it is GOOOOD.

Also? Did I mention I'm not worried?

Which is not to say that I don't think splintering into factions is a good and healthy thing for a community. I do think it's certain flavors of inevitable, though. It's just the attitude we maintain betwixt subcommunities. Just so we all still respect each other, despite the other's inexplicable mountie fixations.