Majority of what, though? Surely not registered Buffistas. People who vote? Then I'd say we should have a couple of days of voting, anyway.

Could we take a poll on how many people would bother taking a vote on a thread they don't care about. I think a majority of people who vote would end up being in favor. There needs to be a better way to assess interest, i.e. at least a certain number of people have to vote for the thread.

100 people need to vote? 2/3 pro? Something like that?

I have been looking around a bit for a supplementary forum or two more in the vein of MWT, if for no other reason because Buffistas just don't have the numbers in my stage of life to sustain an extensive Career Advice or Preparation for Parenthood discussion. No luck so far, though, because I'm pretty picky in wanting a group that resembles this place in being literate and broadly supportive and civil, not the sort that would be all "you go girl!" if one was making stupid choices, but where advice would be given without gratuitous insults to the recipient and with a certain acknowledgement that there's more than one right way to live.

Tall order, I know.

The question to me doesn't seem to be new thread or not, but what we want buffistas.org to be in terms of a community?

I'm back on W/X reading posts about this very thing when were trying to figure out what we wanted the new board to be. I'm sure we decided some things about setting up new threads back there. Of course I can't find them.

My question with voting is, what is a majority? Does there have to be a quorum or a minimum number of votes? Because you could ostensibly see one thread being created by X number of votes, and another thread receiving the same amout of votes and not passing, because the voting percentages were different. If a quorum is needed, it may lead to campaigning, which could use up as much bandwidth and be far more annoying than our current discussions.

Another problem with voting for threads, and needing a strong majority to carry the vote, is what happens if there's a sizable minority that really want a thread, and who would use it, and who won't hurt anyone by having it? I don't see why they should have to bow to a majority who have no intention of posting in the thread. For example, we Atlantic Canadians didn't ask for a thread, we were given one because of the spoiler factor. There''s only 6 of us-- we could have easily been voted down, even though it keeps the rest of you safe from spoiling. I'm not convinced voting is the best way.

won't hurt anyone by having it?

I'm not sure how one defines "hurt" in this context.

ita, I guess I'm thinking of things like: I was kind of opposed to a Smallville thread because I was wary of thread bloat. But I realized that I don't watch the show, I won't post there, and what does it really matter to me if this thread exists? There was also an element of wanting to not be left out of part of the community, but I've long since realized that reading all the threads is an impossible task.

Deleting/archiving threads that don't have activity would seem logical, though it would be nice to have warning so people could go into intermittent threads and post place-keeper posts (the porn anthology thread comes to mind, we really are working on that). That way is someone requests a thread that has a brief flare of glory then dies out, it can be taken off eventually and save our space.

The thing is, Susan, I totally agree with you -- if even three (heck, *two*) people want a thread and it's not directly contrary to the mission of this board (e.g., libelious or illegal), let them have it. But it seems like what happens now is a thread is proposed, a small number of people who would post in it support it, and they're opposed by a larger number of people who dislike thread proliferation. The whole byzantine voting thing was my attempt at coming up with a neater way of creating threads. What other options do you see?

But it seems like what happens now is a thread is proposed, a small number of people support it, and they're opposed by a larger number of people who dislike thread proliferation.

But that's hardly been true at all in actual practice. What seriously proposed threads have we not started?

Off the top of my head? Movies, foamies, general TV, and Alias.

But it seems like I'm trying to change something a lot of you don't think needs changing. I'm stepping out of this discussion for now, cos I don't want to seem like a dead-horse-beater when really what I am is fascinated by process and community dynamics.