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: Jon B, P.M. Marcontell, Liese S., amych, msbelle, shrift, Dana, Laura
Stompy Emerita: ita, DXMachina
Anyway, I took a peek at the Supernatural thread and it is flying along. Which I think is a good thing. I think the fandom element is still very strong glue for this community even if we don't have just one fandom to focus on anymore. It's as strong a bond as the social ones.
I want to take this statement as a good thing, but I still kinda bristle. The new thread is working because we are
making
it work, but, well it's still a very touchy topic for me.
Supernatural is flying, but Boxed Set is quieter, it feels. Not so happy with that.
Guess we did talk a lot there. And there was cross pollination for me. Wait, Plei says it better here:
It worked for some, didn't work for others. It did work for me, and now I'm not even in it, and unless something catches my eye next season that I feel hypercompelled to discuss, I won't be. Which makes me sad, even as I'm enjoying in-depth discussion of gender issues in the new thread.
People call me "Cor" all the time. Perhaps I am 3/4 of the fabled core member.
Kudos on the poll work, y'all. That was a huge undertaking.
Cor--you are the reason I post in music most of the time. Really. I just like the chance to say howdy.
I concur with this. I think coupled with a higher quorum it would make a difference.
Any ideas on what would work best if we raised the quorum?
I'm attached to a percentage of users - either active posters (by one of ita's counts), or of total registered users.
I'm not sure where to peg that percentage though it should produce a number higher than 42.
70% of voters in the poll were uninterested in revisiting the voting rules. What do you think is broken where you are so eager to change them?
Lurkers don't matter because they never say what they're thinking.
But as Jesse has pointed out, people whose names you don't know have given money to support the board. Sometimes even a healthy amount of money.
Lurkers matter in ways we're not seeing.
They're still in the minority, but they participate in unseen ways.
But many were interested in making it harder to create new threads, IIRC. Perhaps we need to raise the quorum just for thread creation? Time-and-a-half (63) or something?
70% of voters in the poll were uninterested in revisiting the voting rules.
Except that 53% thought that establishing a more difficult threshold for creating a new thread was a good idea.
These two things are indirect contradiction with each other, unless you presume that some significant portion of respondants don't think creating a greater threshold for thread creation is the same as revisiting the voting rules.
Who ARE core Buffistas? I hear this term a lot but I think we may all have different definitions. Does core mean people who post a lot? People who do work like stompying? People who make noise in B'craxy? To me, the core is folks who would radically change my experience of the board if they stopped posting--posters like (off the top of my head) ita, Betsy, Hec, Teppy, Paperdol, Nilly, Erika, Aimee, KristinT, Jesse, GC, ND, JZ, MsBelle, Bon, Tommy, Frank, BillyT, Cindy, Connie, Cashmere, Flea and I know there are WAY more I am forgetting. I don't know what "Core" means to anyone else. For me, core is people who make my experience here as rich and fun as it is.
t smooches Robin
It means a lot to me to be considered part of the core since this community is the core of most of my friendships at this point. I started here in 2004 as Angel was ending; had I found TT eariler, I would have been there too. But I wasn't, so three years in still makes me a bit of a newbie. Don't feel that way anymore, but I know some people still see me as such.
I define "core" not by how long someone has been here but by how his/her voice becomes an integral part of the board. Those Buffistas who fought to create the Phoenix Board are core (or once were if they've left the board), but many people who've arrive after those early days have become active, passionate posters and have made themselves integral to my time here, at least. I agree with Robin that the core is fluid.
That said, I believe democracy is democracy. Even if a lurker is reading the boards every day but has been too shy to pipe up, s/he still has a vote. I'm not concerned about a sea of lurkers suddenly storming B'xy and demanding major cultual shifts because...well...it just doesn't seem all that likely unless they've secretly gotten in contact with each other and are in communication about their master plans via email and are--even now--plotting the board's demise. The Lurker Liberation Cabal does not keep me up fretting at night.
Since I arrived at b.org a few months before the real identity crisis set in when Angel went off the air and Wonderfalls got canceled, perhaps I have a different perspective on what this board is. I had only briefly experienced a more Whedon-centric board and watched as people scrambled to talk about where they were going and how they should deal with newcomers now that Whedon was off TV. As I settled in to find my place, Minearverse and Bitches became my first homes. I lurked in Literary and posted drabbles in GWW; I skimmed Natter but was constantly 500 posts behind and couldn't seem to be a part of a conversation there. I loved Boxed Set since I wasn't watching most of the shows there and loved the snarky television conversations. As Boxed Set began to include more and more shows--some of which I was watching and really wanted to talk about and others that I was planning to watch but couldn't keep up with--I reluctantly had to unsubscribe.
So for the last year, "my" board has been Bitches, Natter, Minearverse, F2F, and--most recently--the HP book club. My agenda, if I have one, is to keep a sense of community. A Buffista is in trouble? Buffistas help. A Buffista is pregnant? Buffistas squee and make baby blankets. A Buffista has a fascinating new theory about the geometry of Harry Potter (yes Nilly, darling, I'm looking at you)? The rest of us bask in her spicy brains and then spin of into a thousand what-ifs. But I know that this board, currently my board, will look different next year. I am not afraid of those changes. I believe that we care too much about our little oasis in the wilds of the internet. Like Allyson said:
I'm thinking that we'd not let something like that happen. If enough people who actually post the entertainment felt the board was starting to blow, we'd make whatever changes were necessary to keep us together and afloat.
I have faith in us.
