TT never felt like a community to me.

TOL became a community for me, but that was after a core group of halfway reasonable people, of all sorts of religious beliefs (including one Satanist) had found some common cause in beating back frequent drive-bys by fundies (for want of a better term) of various stripes. The siege mentality can work wonders.

TT was problematic, largely because the other places I posted were just too damn quiet.

fwiw, NewsUnlimited (and BooksUnlimited, FilmUnlimited et al) allows any registered poster to start a new thread.

But there's much more of a sense of community at Buffistas.org than there is over there.

(At least on the busier boards. BU and FU were fairly Buffista-like, actually, only with different agendas.)

I am not, however, advocating everyone starting threads. Even though I was for a music thread, and would be for a movies thread, I do think we probably have too many threads! I like that we talk about it.

This is probably the most traffic bureacracy has had in years!

I am not, however, advocating everyone starting threads.

I don't think there's a need for that step to be taken right now. But if it were implemented, I don't think it would tear the community apart or anything, is all I'm saying.

Burrell, you're defining community differently than I am, I guess. I can understand that. I've equally felt like a part of something in all of those places. IME, it's about how much I post, not how many threads there are.

For me, it's about who I am conversing with, not how much or how little I post. (Says the mega posty girl)

Okay, any other USians amused at the acronym FU? t /dork

Likewise Music and Movies -- are these really such niche interests that we can't talk about them in the common room? But when there's a significant number of people that want to talk about something that's likely to be of zero interest to everyone else, I think it's more polite to create an LotR thread than to take over Natter for weeks on end.

I think what FayJay is talking about is taking part in a conversation. It's what I was talking about. It's hard to participate in a conversation in a loud place. If someone starts talking about movies in Natter, and there are 300 posts before you can respond, some or none of which are about that topic, it's hard (at least for me) to feel comfortable participating.

For me, it's about who I am conversing with, not how much or how little I post.

Me, too. If Fay takes off for Movies, and Jen and askye are in Due South, and Hec and Jon B. are in Music -- well, I *still* adore the people who are left in Natter, but I miss the people who *aren't.*

What Darrien said.

Burrell, I guess ISTM that I'd be talking to the same people on more than a surface level whether we had 500 threads or 1. I mean, I would probably bump up against more people in the 1-thread environment, but I'd be more likely to figure out who I shared interests with if there were 500.

I am Steph and Burrell.