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.

There are just too many people around here now to expect everything to go on in one thread, I think. Which isn't to say that trying to hold the line at this point is unreasonable, but as more people show up and the board's population grows, things are going to split off. Look at the separation between Bitches and Natter, for instance, and that's been true for what, years?

Unless we want to try to set some sort of a limit on posting or on numbers of members, it's not so much a solvable problem. That kind of intimate sense of I-know-everybody community isn't sustainable on a board with as many members as Buffistas has now, I don't think. I mean, I'm pretty quiet around here but I read every day, and I'd say maybe a quarter of the regular posters really stand out for me as individuals - usually because they've been around the longest or are particularly distinctive in some way.

I haven't nattered in over a month. I rarely find the time to natter in the Bitch thread, simply because I don't have the time to sit around and talk for upteen hours. But I do try to check the threads I'm subscribed to, because I can walk in there, know what they're talking about, comment on it, and head back out knowing that there's not going to be five hundred posts to come back to in two hours when I get another free minute. I like that I can still participate in the community, without being in the show threads (which I haven't touched since May) or the nattery threads. So I guess I'm an advocate for specific threads.

I hang in Bitches, I don't hang in Natter, it goes too damned fast. Plus I like being completely free about what I talk about in Bitches. I do miss some of the people who don't go over to Bitches, but we're always happy to see people who've been absent.