is there anything out there now, that we want (in a needy way) to talk about?

This is a big question. Which TV show we might want to talk about is a smaller one.

We have a pop culture sort of a feel, as spun off Buffy which spun of Angel, begatbegatbegat.

Demand pushed for music, although it's not directly related. Demand pushed for movies, closer related. Comics got their foot in the door, through Fray. Technical discussion is here-- it has nothing to do with "we found each other thanks to a TV show."

Your assumption seems to be that we are a general TV-centric pop-culture focussed site.

Are we?

That's the bigger discussion.

It's not really one I care about, because I don't think we're broken, or likely to be broken soon, and our details will shift from moment to moment, and just be expressible in averages.

My reading on the "disconnect" we are having is that those of us who either stopped watching the shows or stopped using the show threads, or both - those of us that stuck around in this community have already gone through the "What is this community without show discussion?" thing in our heads. It's something we went through without a Bureau discussion and I think it just seems obvious to us, you either like the community for the other stuff and you stay or you don't and you don't. That may seem harsh and I am not meaning it to be, but honestly, it should be obvious that lots of the community was not in the Angel thread. Is there really a significant chunk of people that were ONLY in the show threads?

If enough people wanted to really hash out discussions of any show, I think they would and we would be in here having "Should show X get its own thread because 200 natter posts in one night about it seem like a lot" talk. I do not recall ever seeing a request to stop a discussion in natter about a TV show.

Some people started or joined movies, literary, music, whathaveyou in addition to reading/participating in show threads, some people started or joined in place of them.

Here is what I have no doubt about. Any new thread that is started will generate more posts on that topic than the topic is now getting in any combination of threads. Please correct me if I am wrong, but every time we add a thread total board posts go up.

I would like to add that back in the pre-natter days the show threads would be full of hundreds and hundreds of posts that had zero to do with the show.

I've been thinking about this....especially with regard to the ideas of creating links with each other.

Even if we had a magic TV thread that brought us all together, I could bet you it wouldn't bring us all together. Even if the most active posters (at say, 100-200) posting once or twice a day in such a Magic Thread would suddenly make it too high traffic for some of us.

In other news, I totally agree with what msbelle is saying.

Even if we had a magic TV thread that brought us all together, I could bet you it wouldn't bring us all together.

Nope. Strange as it may seem, some of us don't really watch TV.

Here is what I have no doubt about. Any new thread that is started will generate more posts on that topic than the topic is now getting in any combination of threads. Please correct me if I am wrong, but every time we add a thread total board posts go up.

Yes. This is a basic law of network behavior.

ME TV is what brought us together (some later than others), but it is not the reason we stay together. The relationships that have developed on- and off-line are what keeps this place going. Television is secondary.

Not everyone is going to get along, and not everyone is going to know everyone else. It doesn't make us horrible people. There's no mandate that we all like each other. The differences are what make us Buffistae and unique.

I heart what ita said here: ita "Bureaucracy 3: Oh, so now you want to be part of the SOLUTION?" May 26, 2004 11:00:00 am PDT . We're not broken, and I'm much more comfortable letting things evolve naturally at this point. There's a danger of becoming too concerned with the meta of this place at the expense of just enjoying ourselves.

Odd. I just got email from my brother - who is apparently on his way to Mongolia on Sunday. Maybe he can scout out hotels for those of us who don't care for yurts.

ita, I had this big long response, but basically it consisted of me pointing out where you're arguing with things I never said and didn't (mean to) imply.

My assumption?
Someone was going to propose a general TV thread, or a bunch of category based TV threads.

Basis for my assumption?
The discussion in Betsy's thread.

Underlying reason for posting the intial invitation to discussion?
I don't think those kind of threads will work for us, so it seemed better to focus the conversation so that we could find out if we even wanted any kind of tv thread, or not.

I never said we were TV centric. I never said TV has something to do with every thread we've posted. It seems to me in reviewing this whole conversation, that many of the things you've tagged as my assumptions, weren't either stated or implied by me. As I'm good with Liese's POV, there's no sense in continuing to push my initial suggestion. It was only made, because I was concerned we'd be looking at the general tv thing again, and since that doesn't suit so many, it seemed more sensible to find out just what exactly does.

I'll tell you though, when I first broached this subject, I was concerned by the need to have to justify inviting the discussion. It felt like topic moderation on a topic that is least generally related to our board, and to the description of this thread:

A thread to discuss naming threads, board policy, new thread suggestions, and anything else that has to do with board administration and maintenance. Guaranteed to include lively debate and polls. Natter discouraged, but not deleted.

And while I expect any number of people not to be interested in any given conversation, it's another thing entirely to be told a discussion doesn't belong here, when it is related to the stated purpose of the thread.

I heart what ita said here: ita "Bureaucracy 3: Oh, so now you want to be part of the SOLUTION?" May 26, 2004 11:00:00 am PDT . We're not broken, and I'm much more comfortable letting things evolve naturally at this point. There's a danger of becoming too concerned with the meta of this place at the expense of just enjoying ourselves.

I don't think we're broken, either.

Someone was going to propose a general TV thread, or a bunch of category based TV threads.

Well, there you go. I didn't think that was necessarily going to get off the ground, and that if it did ... that discussion would be part of the proposal discussion.

I still don't see the reason for the discussion you had wanted to have, then.

But it's moot now.

Also, just because ita (or anyone else) doesn't see the purpose behind a discussion doesn't mean it's not necessary or worth pursuing.