Dr. Walsh ,'Potential'
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.
Current Stompy Feet: ita, Jon B, DXMachina, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych
I don't keep up with Natter because it goes too fast for me to keep up with.
Honestly? I doubt that anyone keeps up with Natter. If they do, it is by far the minority of Buffistas. The rest of us skim a little, skip a lot, and join in. I don't understand why so many folks have I-can't-keep-up-with-Natter issues. Fine, don't keep up. We still want to say "hello" to you.
exactly Burrell. I do the Diet - read the last 20-50 posts, Beep me and Press, then join in for the time that I am on-line. Next day, do the same. I occasionally search on my name or on a topic if I was waiting for or expecting a response to something.
Fine, don't keep up. We still want to say "hello" to you.
So what you're basically describing is a chat room mentality. That's not my thang. If I say hello to someone, I want to be around for "how are you", you know? I don't want to miss it because there are 300 posts abou cats and jobs and cooking in-between.
Edit: Which does not mean you can't post 300 messages about cats and jobs and cooking while I'm getting coffee, of course. It just means I can't read them, and I don't want to participate in a conversation where I know I'm going to miss the end.
I don't want to miss it because there are 300 posts abou cats and jobs and cooking in-between.
I'm not sure how adding extra threads will help. Natter's been insane pretty much from the beginning. Every new thread we've added hasn't decreased the amount of Natter.
We can't FORCE people to Natter, of course, but the potential balkanization makes me sad. It makes us less community-like. There are people in Spoilers and Smallville who I have NEVER seen before.
And the community part of us is the best part, IMO. I wouldn't travel across the country to meet so damn many of you if you were all just some people who happen to watch the same show I do.
The community built from the being together in the same thread(s), and the more threads we have, the more splitty we are, and the less community we have.
My .02, FWIW.
I'm not sure how adding extra threads will help.
Um, I don't especially want extra threads. Truth be told, I couldn't keep up with more here than I keep up with anyhow. I just don't see how having more threads would wreck the community. Is it not a community on forums where anyone can add a thread who feels like it? That is not my experience at all.
it won't help. and catching up on 20 posts in 15 different threads where there is supposed to be a topic isn't gonna allow for much of talking about how someone is doing.
FWIW, the Due South thread is about 300 posts ahead of Smallville, but then the former is the unofficial 'fandoms that don't fit in other categories' thread.
Besides, Fraser and RayK? Hot.
I have a question: does anyone participate in another forum where there's so much resistance to new threads? Because everywhere else that I post or have posted, it's pretty much start one if you want one.
The first board on which I posted (Time Online's Faith board), anyone could start a thread. The moderator would delete offensive ones, of course; and on one board (Time 100) he started deleting duplicates after a rash of Elvis threads. I think he did the same thing occasionally on the Politics board, but that was pretty uncontrollable. But if any thread had no new posts for a given period (two weeks on Faith, and--
Er. Sorry. Got distracted there for a moment. Anyway, on Politics, threads would be killed after a week of inactivity.
There were some obvious differences, of course, compared to this place. Its moderation had to be paid for, so there was less of it. There wasn't such a community feel to it, and any communities (we did form a subculture known as Cromists) had no actual say over how the thing was run. And, of course, it was Time Magazine ponying up the cost of the site.
catching up on 20 posts in 15 different threads where there is supposed to be a topic isn't gonna allow for much of talking about how someone is doing.
This is why you keep a central bar or natter or chit-chat thread. It works on every other freaking forum in the world, is all I'm saying.