Thanks for the link to that Shirky article, bon bon. Extremely interesting. There are a couple of points that I honestly don't know how to apply to us and I think it's a good thing that I now know enough to think about them.

Ice gave me courage to say something. Well, that and the assurance that lurkers’ opinions were recently solicited and encouraged. I posted one time in 2004 during Wonderfalls, and then after lurking a few months, drifted away. At that time my userid made more sense, so I want to be clear that the name is not an intentional insult to the current discussion.

After that time, I haven’t checked the board regularly until a couple weeks ago when a friend mentioned it on Livejournal and I remembered the witty conversation of the regulars that I loved about Buffistas. Despite that fact, if Supernatural wasn’t its own thread, I still would be lurking or not here at all.

Some days I have the time to read and keep up in busier threads. Most days, I don’t. Because of that and because of the intense investment of most of the regular posters, I wouldn’t normally say something in this thread. I suspect, most people in mainly lurker mode wouldn’t presume to come in here and help to shape the board either. So I don’t think that lack of conversation in Bureaucracy from lurkers (or even infrequent posters) is an indication of not caring about the board. It could possibly be a function of intimidation. At least it is for me, in case you wanted another lurker perspective.

Thank you, both Ice and lurker, for being brave enough to delurk and voice your opinions. I'm a very regular poster, and B'crxy intimidates the hell out of me most of the time.

t /frantic attempts to catch up (I'm still in LightBulb)

msbelle, the only data I could see in my skim was in Kristen "Voting Discussion: We're Screwing In Light Bulbs AIFG!" Jul 26, 2007 6:58:02 am PDT :

For the first 20 Natter threads, we went through 10k posts in an average of 26 days. The next 20, the average was 34 days. The last 12, the average has been 50 days. To me, the numbers indicate that Natter is less busy than it used to be. YNMV.

Everything is my fault. Yay paperdol for remembering that!

Thank you, both Ice and lurker, for being brave enough to delurk and voice your opinions.

What Kristin said.

t back to attempts at catching up

I did a marathon catch-up last night. I don't have firm opinions on a lot of this stuff (I see multiple sides, and am not sure which trumps for me). However, there are a couple points I didn't feel were made.

First, on the statistics that Nilly just cited (not picking on you, Nilly. I was going to say this anyway), and about looking at Natter/Bitches during the Experimental Threads, I worry about us seeing causation where there's actually correlation. People have often commented (albeit jokingly) about changes in the lives of "us". We do have more people with small children, for example, and that's got to have an impact on how those people post. It may not be the same for every parent, or even for the same parent at different times. There is a group of Buffistas who have been here for many years (I've been here for about 4, and I know I'm a relative newcomer, although I absolutely consider myself part of the community, and people who are far newer than me), and their lives are different, and our conversations are different, in part, because of that. The needs of the community may also be different than they were 5 years ago.

Second, television discussion is different from knitting, or cats, or even books or movies. Really, the thing it's closest to, IMO, is comics. You've got stories for which one can be spoiled, but those stories are also on-going, with installments coming in regularly. I can be spoiled for a sporting event, but once it's over, it's over. In my own experience, I haven't seen last week's Eureka yet, but then, neither have I seen PotC:AWE. The first means that I don't want to see this week's till I've seen last weeks, and, therefore, have to stay out of Boxed Set, skim, and/or be spoiled. The second means that I skip over some (in this case whitefonted) conversation in movies, and then continue to participate, since my thoughts on Order of the Phoenix don't really have anything to do with not having seen Pirates. So, I guess what I'm saying is comparing making threads for tv to making threads for lunch or baseball is, to me, a very false analogy in some important ways.

DebetEsse makes good points.

television discussion is different from knitting

OOOO! I'd love a knitting thread. t /j/k

I second Megan!

Not actually a proposal was it? Ah well, we'll always have Minearverse.

DebetEsse makes good points

wrod

Some quick and dirty numbers:

During the 44 days (4/18/07-6/1/07) that the experimental threads were open, Natter had 7380 posts

During a previous 44 days (3/1/07-4/12/07 chosen to be easy to count) Natter had 7886 posts

During 4/18/06-6/1/06 Natter had 8258 posts

During 3/1/06-4/12/06 Natter had 10299 posts

Which tells me nothing conclusive, but they are numbers for those of you that want some.