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.

Okay, any other USians amused at the acronym FU?

It means the same in the UK, actually - although by this point the joke has palled so much that it didn't even strike me when I wrote it.

t /dumb.

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.*

(grins)

That's lovely of you. But I spend hardly any time in Natter as is; any hypothetical other thread would be an alternative to NOT talking, rather than choosing to take a perfectly good in-depth conversation out of Natter.

And really, I'm just being perverse here talktalktalking about it. If there were smaller threads dedicated to things I'm interested in - as with dueSouth, and Smallville, and Precious, then I'd probably frequent them and have conversations there (which I shan't have in Natter) about things on those themes, as I do with these existing smaller threads.

But it's cool not to have such smaller threads if that's going to have a negative impact on the community. I'm easy.

(Also, I should be going greyish soon, so I really am just being devil's advocate woman. Stop it, evil hand!)

That's lovely of you. But I spend hardly any time in Natter as is;

It was just an example, sweet Fay.

And really, I'm just being perverse here talktalktalking about it. If there were smaller threads dedicated to things I'm interested in - as with dueSouth, and Smallville, and Precious, then I'd probably frequent them and have conversations there (which I shan't have in Natter) about things on those themes, as I do with these existing smaller threads.

But it's cool not to have such smaller threads if that's going to have a negative impact on the community. I'm easy.

Fay is me. Again.

Ah! I'm reading along catching and going "Oh, yeah, I'm against thread proliferation". And then two posts later thinking "No, we should totally have a thread for that, you're so RIGHT!".

Sigh.

I admit, it really pains me, all the skipping that makes natter less like a long conversation and more like a chatroom where you don't even know what came before.

FTR, I do really think that a politics thread might just be too much. I know I"d be scared to go in there. And I fear what it might become...

But here's my thought: if someone heard about a specific thread, and came here to read that, and felt like they fit in, or found a community in that thread, would that feeling still apply when they started nosing around the rest of Buffista-dom? I mean, sure, you might come here looking for Firefly and not especially be interested in Smallville or even Buffy, but...the general sense. I guess I feel like music is something that if someone came and was reading what Hec and Hayden had to say, they would still be someone buffistaish. If someone got into the Due South thread, they would still feel how we are. I'm scared a politics thread wouldn't be like that. Even if it was a fairly polite politics thread. Does that make any sense? (If not, please ignore--I'm not very good at articulating my feelings normally anyway, and it's been a very rough day).