I think that there are two reasons that the vote does not always reflect the common will -- 1. The question is not phrased in such a way that you can vote the way you feel 2. We don't have an option for "I care about this issue, but none of the choices reflect my opinion"

I post at b.org for:

Yeah, that would fail for me unless tickyboxes were there because I would check them all.

That's the best part of voting! Shutting the Fuck Up.

Except that we don't really. Because -- either hilariously or pathetically, you be the judge -- I posted this in 2004:

And if it were just a one TV show per thread thing, I could see that. But, if this turns out to be a general TV thread, there are going to be very few hours in the day when West Coasters or people who taped can frequent the thread. I can't go in to talk about the QaF that I just watched because there's a non-whitefonted discussion of the Alias that doesn't air for another two hours here.

We really have been having the same debate for some time now without a resolution.

I would be more interested to see a list like:

I post at b.org for:

a) general social interaction

b) discussion of TV

c) discussion of fandom

d) maintaining establishing friendships

Or better, possibly more specific tickybox options, but along those lines.

I agree. Once we have that info, we can move on into specifics.

[link] bahahah! and my post after? STILL TRUE! Still regret making Boxed Set what it is.

Frankly, I would like a poll to see what everyone feels and what they want. I can see good points for many different methods of discussion, and I would be happy to place my vote to make the board useful to the most people. I don't want to vote to shut anyone up and I also don't want to vote to appease only the loudest voice if it is a minority either.

I don't want to shut anybody up either - I just want some resolution so we don't have to continue circling this issue.

FWIW, I don't think we were ready to make that call in 2004.

And I certainly don't regret the creation of Box Set which fostered lots of spicy discussion.

I post at b.org for:

I do think that's the core of it, really, but I do think frequency would be useful too.

You're probably right, but I think the question needs to be framed so that it's not answered in details we'll get bogged down in. Some people consider the board part of their daily routine, even if they can only post on every Tuesday afternoon, and Sundays between 1 and 6. Some people can't post at work. Some people post only at work.

For me, the frequency question is more about how important the board is on some kind of a regular basis.

I'm not being needlessly argumentative, I swear. And I think I'm probably too tired to be coherent. My point is, poll = good. However you word it.

Is there any kind of tool that can tell how often lurkers pull us up? I've begun wondering how many lurkers vote and whether we're just a big soap opera to someone out there who could care less what happens so long as we're entertaining. I've also wondered how many of our approximately 1500 members are actual accounts that check in on a weekly/monthly basis and how many are never used.

I'm not sure it's relevant to polling or voting, but it would be interesting to get a closer gauge of our actual population base.

The only thing, Sean, is that even with us paying more now, there is always an upper limit to our resources. What has been proven is that if we thread it, we will talk. Increasing the number of threads has never resulted in fewer overall posts. So it's not an infinite number of threads we can support, technically or practically.

I do get that, Liese. But it does feel a little like the level we're currently paying for can support more threads than our community-ness would be able to generate (though I admit I may be wrong about that). And that's also where the anti-proliferation and anti-single-show-thread-for-everything arguments are starting to convince me -- what we can sustain, and what we can afford, and how much traffic we generate changes as we draw in more people, and I think the more we dedicate single threads to single shows, the more we risk innundating ourselves with random googlers and growing beyond what even our current service levels can support.

Yeah, I'm starting to see how what threads we create and why can have a serious impact on where we go, and there's likely no way to predict what thread is going to bring in a flood of people.