Maybe I'm concerned that we'll have 83 different threads, Cooking, Job Bitching, Birdwatching, Hairdos, My God I'm Fat and Depressed and No One Likes Me Please Stroke My Ego, and Various Styles of Clog Dancing.

Hypothetically, if we did, so what? I don't see the tragedy there -- To me, it's easier to find and participate in conversations in 83 threads that get 10 posts a day each than in 1 thread that gets 830.

The argument that I think is more cogent is that we came together over a TV show, and that discussing movies and books and music is a logical outgrowth of discussing television (and Natter is a logical outgrowth of talking with people everyday), whereas politics or cooking-specific threads don't have that connection.

But I may just not grok natter.

But it feels wrong when I read the posts asking people to drop a topic just because it might get hot.

Chances are those posts arise from the fact that the hot topic has probably come up before, and probably gotten ugly. Not always, but chances are. Bitter experience and all that.

That's true, Dana.

I'm kind of anti-thread creep in general, but I seem to remember (but can't specifically cite or find any, so I may be wrong) times when people have been politely discussing politics, and those who didn't want to discuss it made comments expressing their desire that it would stop.

When the discussion has been turned, or, say (and I do this, and I admit it) I've made some passive-aggressive comments about the thing, it's because I can feel it getting warmer. When I start dropping loud Doblerize hints, it's reached near-toasty. It's not that it doesn't start off polite, it's just that some posters are oil and water about the subject, and it's going to get unmixey sooner rather than later.

Edit: Or, what Dana said. It's always been experience being my guide.

Do we have that big a problem with political discussions? The one Caroma mentioned seems to me more the exception than the rule. I have no problem with political topics coming up in Natter. For one thing, I don't think they come up all that often, and usually in response to something major going on - which means we'd likely want to be talking about it anyway. I guess I just don't see the problem here.

but the natter that evolves from it then has to move back to natter, and it seems to squash the conversation that was evolving naturally.

I don't believe that to be true. Natter is only squashed by admins in the "right column" threads.

When I start dropping loud Doblerize hints, it's reached near-toasty. It's not that it doesn't start off polite, it's just that some posters are oil and water about the subject, and it's going to get unmixey sooner rather than later.

But, see, maybe I'm in the minority, but those discussions interest me the most. I sometimes want something really spicy and volatile.

So, I vote for the Assholes Thread, where we Assholes can be Assholes to each other, with the understanding that no hothouse flowers will cry and stomp off and say, "I'm leaving forever!" So that people will collectively say, "No, please don't go, we're begging you to stay, and we're sorry we were so passionate. Here, have some white bread."

See what an Asshole I am?

Seriously, I think the mix of hothouse flowers and spewing volcanoes temper each other, nicely.

But, see, maybe I'm in the minority, but those discussions interest me the most. I sometimes want something really spicy and volatile.

There's spicy, and then there's worrying about having to scream "DO I HAVE TO TURN THIS CAR AROUND???"* when people are fighting.

Spicy I like. The other I don't.

*Standard Disclaimer: There is no official weight behind this urge, just the typical spent-too-much-time-with-rug-rats reaction.

The thing about the Assholes thread is, the internet is full of assholes. Heck, the world is full of assholes. The thing I enjoy about the Buffistas is they manage to be both not assholes, and not boring, which is a rarer combination than you'd think.

Do we have that big a problem with political discussions?

I don't think we do right now. A lot of that, of course, is that they only come up sporadically (which of course is an argument against a separate thread). It's also because, IMO, this place encourages standards of discourse.

I actually worry that if we have a thread dedicated to politics, it'll get harder to uphold those standards. Because politics does engage people's emotions, and it's relatively easy to cause bad feeling, and over the course of a single argument that bad feeling can escalate as people act just a bit more out of a sense of grievance.

I don't think that's become a problem here, at least in part because the discussions stop. Eventually the nattery natterness takes over, the politics takes a back seat again and any bad feeling gets a chance to subside. I fear that if we had a dedicated politics thread, that chance to let matters cool off could be compromised, at least some of the time.