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
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.
I think there should and will be a Foamies thread when the time comes, which I think is not quite yet. I think the general TV thread idea has only just been proposed, and you know most things take time to percolate around here. I did not know an Alias thread had been proposed. And I'll grant you the general movies thread.
I think that Movies and Politics are the only ones that have been shot down. And with politics, it was proposed, but very few people seemed to be actually interested in posting there.
My real objection to the voting process is that it maybe too rigid and not responsive to circumstance. Maybe we need to have a combination system. If we can't seem to reach a clear consensus on a new thread in a day, then it moves to a vote.
A Politics thread might have its fans, but I very rarely went into the Politics areas of TT. The arguments got a little strident there. I'd trust most of the Buffistas in a political argument in a F2F, but I'd rather not have an open-mike free-for-all here.
