Bureaucracy 4: Like Job. No, really, just like Job
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
I seem to recall that the day thread idea has come up before. Am I wrong?
It has. Objections as I recall included the Tivo issue, lack of commonality between shows, and holy crap seven new threads. Also, it doesn't really help the spoiler issues that much. At the time, we weren't discussing these as substitutes but rather additions to existing threads, and ended up going the thematic/network buckets instead. IIRC. Which I'm pretty sure I do since the idea of closing the existing tv threads all together would probably have left deep emotional scar all over the place.
I'm not saying don't discuss it or that it doesn't have merit at all, just trying to remember how we turned away from that idea before.
The main problem I see with a day-of-the-week TV thread is that those of us with DVRs often have no idea what day of the week our shows actually air on
Both of my DVR's list which day they were recorded. But, maybe this could be alleviated with in the thread description "Discussion of Thursday TV shows. This includes CSI, Survivor, Smallville, Office, My Name Is Earl, ER, Supernatural, and others". I think once you get in the habit, you'll remember which show is on which day.
Would network instead of day of week be better? Seems there are far too many of those with cable channels and all.
Again, just brainstorming here. Trying to find a middle ground. I am *not* dug in on this idea. Happy to jump on bandwagon for other ideas. Just thought if we have smaller buckets, there is less likely for solo show threads being proposed. Then a higher bar to add solo show threads. For non-show threads (like Gaming) same old standard would be in effect.
The delayed viewing issue is compounded not only by people watching on DVR-delay, but waiting for shows to come out on DVD (right?). So there's essentially no way to guarantee that a thread that includes more than one show will make every single person happy.
Of course, I don't believe there is a solution at all that will make every single person happy. In truth, I think that, even though it's even less likely to happen than reducing discussion, the thing that would help is not taking these discussions personally. Not to diminish the importance of this board, or the community, but come ON, people. I genuinely don't understand why people can't disagree without hurt feelings.
No idea how this would work, but just an idea. What if we did that thing like they do prior to real voting in which an issue is presented neutrally and then there is a single pro and a single con argument for it? If there were some way to distill each side (including content and prolif stances) so that just one statement for each side appeared rather than a back and forth for days on end. Again, no idea how or if this would work, but throwing it out there.
Glam, we used to do it more like that, and I do think it's a better way, but it does require someone (the proposer, or, at the time, a saint like Sophia) to put a lot of time and effort into synthesizing the various arguments and vetting them in the thread over and over.
Er....Plei, I have to admit, there are something like 3,000 unread messages in my Lightbulbs sub right now. And that may just be because someone linked to somewhere in the middle, and i hadn't read the 3,000 before that, either. It was too exhausting.
But then, I often end up voting no preference. I'm mildly antipro, but I don't want to make people who want to talk about stuff sad, so I'm always torn. ;)
And heck, didn't caucus in the real-world primary because I knew I'd vote for whoever won, and didn't really care.
So I may not be the best example.
The day of the week buckets wouldn't help me at all, and I'm one of the spoiler-phobes who wishes she could be in Boxed Set but can't. As was said above, a lot of the problem is not being able to keep up with all the shows I want to watch as they are airing. I would rather not create more bucket threads. Basically, I've accepted that I can only be an active poster about shows that have their own threads, and that's okay. I don't want to disrupt the TV threads that are working for those who actively use them.
I understand the idea behind the days-of-the-week thread concept, but that's just replacing one bucket with another. And if I understand the objections to the buckets correctly, it's that more than one show is lumped in with another, regardless of the criteria used to combine them.
So new buckets wouldn't really solve that problem.
It seems to me a perfectly reasonable proposition, though, to ask that certain discussion take place in specified times and places.
It seems to me to be unreasonable to shut down a relevant (and, in my opinion, valuable) aspect of the thread-creation discussion simply because some people disagree with it or are tired of hearing it.
Jess is me.
Again, if someone's objection to a new thread is not because of the topic, but because they think that new threads contribute to sprawl, which they see as detrimental to the community, then proscribing what discussion can take place is a de facto silencing of the anti-proliferation faction.
I don't see how that's reasonable by any definition of the word.
It seems that the same ideas keep reappearing here that come up in Lightbulbs; it's just that, for now, this discussion hasn't gotten as heated and emotional as Lightbulbs.
The problem, if I understand it, is that discussions about new threads lead to vehement disagreement between those who prefer to keep new threads to a bare minimum and those who think this board should expand whenever the desire for expansion is expressed.
Many people don't like that this disagreement keeps happening, and want to know how to prevent/ameliorate it.
Is that a fair assessment of the issue?
The only way to prevent this disagreement is -- yes, it's simplistic -- to get everyone to agree.
And that's never going to happen. I'm not trying to be pessimistic, but I'm not sure what people think can be done to prevent this disagreement, or why people even think it's necessary to prevent it. No one is trying to prevent disagreement about the *topic/content* of any proposed new thread, right? So why is it necessary to prevent people from disagreeing about the need for new threads in general?
If there were some way to distill each side (including content and prolif stances)
That's a pretty big "if." As much as it sometimed seems like there are two (or three) sides to this argument, I doubt anyone could effectively summarize them without triggering a cascade of "well, kind of, BUT...." posts taking us right back to where we started.
