amych does a better job of explaining it than I do. Listen, I'm not trying to mandate people's discussion, and I tend to think our adherence to bright lines, as it's been put, can result in conversation policing where it isn't necessary. So what I was trying to suggest was, with respect to our culture and the way we do things, also address the way we watch and discuss television as an audience. Like I said before, I don't think it would be a problem if people kept discussing the shows they watch in Natter. But not everyone reads Natter, and we are a community that likes to talk about the things we watch; so I was trying to propose a solution, or at least a change, in the way that would be most accessible and least difficult to implement. Hence, cussin' and fuckin' shows. I see that as a genre, one defined by characterization, subject matter, boundary-pushing, explicit sexual content, and cursing. And some other things that I can't articulate well.

And we might have started boxed set with the intention of pulling together a number of disparate threads left over from WX, but it quickly turned in to something with a much broader scope. And the people who read/post there manage to adhere to the (I think) not especially bright lines without problems. We know to talk about sci-fi/fantasy shows in there, in the great many formats those shows can take. And to me, I get the same feeling in Premium, that we talk about shows with a number of different premises but an inherent similarity, somehow. And that similarity includes the shows we've mentioned from FX.

I think David's right. We're going to have to come to a better resolution at some point in the very near future, because this keeps coming up again and again in various different forms, and I don't think there has been a general satisfaction with the results. Yay Heroes thread, for example, but now more than once in the last 800 posts have been comments about a Supernatural thread. Now again we find ourselves wanting more focused discussion for other television we watch with seriousness. It bears thinking about seriously how we are going to address this. Even though I didn't want to make it a huge deal in the first place, I knew somehow we were going to end up back here, from what I thought would be a minor thread adjustment.

Homicide? The NBC show? SA wasn't suggesting that be discussed in Premium, so what would define this thread for you, her, and me? While not having it be general?

I thought her idea was at the top of the slippery slope. Now I'm even more confused.

Also, I think the reason mostly fannish sf gets discussed in Boxed is because we're fannish, not because the rest doesn't belong.

Okay, here's me trying again, and not from my PDA.

What is this thread other than "A thread to discuss the TV I want to discuss with the people I want to discuss it with"? I just don't get the unifying theory more than "Well, d'uh!"

Choosing to add FX in there...you left out Homicide, then.

I really really don't get it, and the more the discussion goes on the more confused I get.

What is this thread other than "A thread to discuss the TV I want to discuss with the people I want to discuss it with"? I just don't get the unifying theory more than "Well, d'uh!"

I think the more accurate description would be, at least for what I'd like in a thread, is "A place to talk about shows I like where I don't need to wade through natter and fight its white noise." I like nattering in natter, but I'd rather do show discussions elsewhere, and I think I'm not alone in that.

A general TV thread, then?

Choosing to add FX in there...you left out Homicide, then.

Which is exactly why I don't want a definition that's based on networks OR based on "only this exact list of shows can be discussed and all others will be thread-nannied". Because that never actually works, but defining threads certain ways can really encourage it.

No, SA didn't mention Homicide -- I did, as an example of "if I wanted to discuss THIS show, I would find the conversation I want in THAT thread", under my premise that it functions more like a genre thread than a thread that's defined by a network, whether it's HBO or F/X.

And I'm not SA (I've even been in the same room with her, with Buffista witnesses), so I can't answer for her on why she worded her post the way she did. I don't know how if she's secretly working for the F/X marketing department to try to raise their visibility by infiltrating thread slugs, or if she just thought "these shows have a lot in common with the stuff we already talk about in this thread, so let's talk about them".

I don't think the current way of handling TV threads is working, and tighter definitions of "only X, Y, and Z may be discussed in this thread" seem to make the problem worse rather than better.

A general TV thread, then?

I think that's what it keeps coming back to, yes. I'm beginning to think any further attempts to compartamentalize shows are either going to be too specific, and thus mostly just further proliferation, or too arbitrary, and that a white-fonted general thread would be more useful (given that spoilage seems to be a big "nay" factor to the idea, though not the only).

I'd think an all-TV thread would be just as unwieldy as apparently Natter is.

What is this thread other than "A thread to discuss the TV I want to discuss with the people I want to discuss it with"?

I was just thinking... saying that explicitly might actually help. I think it's a mistake to try to come up some way to categorize a (to me) disparate group of shows. It's just an overly complicated solution. SF shows are pretty easy to identify, what with the spaceships/robots/aliens/alternate dimensions, so the genre definition works for Boxed Set. That doesn't mean you need a similar categorical basis for other threads. I honestly don't care what the combination of shows is. I just want to be able to tell what I should and shouldn't expect to find in the thread. And however much I'm told that this is an intuitive grouping, it isn't to me.

So: change the slug to say "For discussion of Sopranos, The Tudors, Dexter, The Shield, Nip/Tuck..." and whatever else you want to include. That's certainly clear enough for those of us who want clarity. And then you won't have to explain why X show is included and Y show isn't, or retrofit a definition around a set of shows. It's not a general TV thread, it's a potpourri. And you can even expand it or split it as needed, depending on traffic.

Or do you just like having a fixed list?

This, mainly. It just seems to me that opening the door to 150 or so different interpretations of what shows mirror the feel/vibe of the premium channel series is going to result in widespread confusion and possibly splitting discussion between the thread and Natter in a way that will be even harder to follow than skimming past unrelated topics in Natter already is.