I agree with Jon. It would be a waste of time to try to anticipate all of the possible variations of known Buffista names or nicknames.

I think that's preferable (and a lot easier!) than trying to come up with a pre-defined list of similar names.

Which is also pretty much like what we eventually desiced about writing an 'exact' etiquette - it's a lot smoother to sort things as they come along, once a basic system is decided upon, than to map out all the possible intrusive behaviors.

I've been catching up on all this, and just wanted to say how very proud I am of Buffistas, whether "old," "core," "new," "sometime," "spirit baby" or whatever.

I agree wholeheartedly with the way this situation was handled, feel, like connie and others, stomach-clenching regret that it was necessary, and that it was, indeed necessary for the quality of the community. I'm sorry I wasn't here for the decision-making, but I want my opinion on record, even after the fact.

I'm overcome with gratitude and affection for you all.

The music thing reminds me sooooo much of the old Usenet days, and in particular of the argument about the net.music (or was it rec.music by then?) split. "I want to talk about everything in one place!" "No, it's too high volume!"

Our Buffista experience is that if you build threads, they will come. I fought fiercely against creating Natter. Then I shrugged and created it. It's now our highest-volume thread. Elisabeth/Lyra Jane was right. (And the Natter continues on the other threads, which is what I was afraid of losing.)

If there's a large enough core of Buffistas who want to talk music, I don't see the harm in facilitating that -- as long as we realize that creating a music thread will automatically create more music postings than we had before, and will add a new focus to the group.

I wish I felt more regret over the idea of suspending someone, but I just don't. People who come here and end up pissing on this community inspire no regret in me at their removal.

And I don't have much of a problem with the concept of suspension/removal in general. In "real life", if I went to a restaurant and begin to dump food on other diners' heads while shouting obscenities at the top of my lungs, I'll be asked to leave because I'm violating the behavioral standards of the place. I might be a very nice person whose antipsychotics aren't working that day (and I mean that without flippancy), or maybe I'm having a really crappy life in general, but those reasons for my behavior don't change the fact that I'm violating the standards of a particular place and should be removed from it until I'm capable of adhering to its standards.

Similarly, I don't think there's any problem with upholding our standards and removing those that can't play by our rules.

I fought fiercely against creating Natter. Then I shrugged and created it. It's now our highest-volume thread. Elisabeth/Lyra Jane was right.

I am SO tempted to bookmark this message so that whenever I feel down or disrespected, I can look at it and say, "See, Betsy said I was right!"

Anyhow.

I just had a conversation with my 9-year-old son that was too apropos.

"I'm not friends with Jonathan any more. Because we kept giving him second chances, and he kept blowing them. He kept doing the same thing we asked him not to do."

Mouths of babes and such.

I want a music thread.

I love Hayden and love talking music with him.

However, the music threads over in PF have closed into a circle of people from TT who have known each other forever and have already run through their circle of interests.

Moreover, I don't want to bounce to other threads anymore. This isn't a Buffy thread for me, but my home base and I'd like to be able to discuss music here the way people discuss what they're reading. I'm starting to get jealous every time I go to the literary thread. There's no logical reason that we would have a literary thread and not a music one.

Further, with the influx of new posters we now have a large enough and varied enough community to allow more subsets within that group. It used to be possible to discuss (in a very surface way) music within Natter. But now the stream of Natter is too heavy to allow that.

Similarly, I would like a general movie board. I don't think having those boards would keep movie or music discussion out of Natter, but Natter really has its own character now and is not the right place to have a substantive discussion on those subjects.

Me, I don't like bouncing to literary either. Not that I'm jealous, I just don't like running over there to talk books, or wondering if I'm being too booky in Natter.