would that help as far as technical issues and not be an additional drain?

Probably not, since it's increased posting and reading (resulting from the new thread) that'll be the drain, not the number of threads that exist.

Because I'm all about the doomsday, do we need to do a fundraising drive to in case we need to go dedicated come the Fall teevee season?

Should we prepare ourselves for the Worst Case Scenario?

not the number of threads that exist.

If the number of people who sign on to lurk and participate in Buffistadom increases due to new threads for discussion, that could cause board fuckage. But that's just theory. I have no proof that there will suddenly be a big jump in people participating due to a general teevee thread, and am just talking out of my ass.

Will thread consolidation help? i.e., withdraw thread proposals in favor of board health, do the tightening up of threads, check our pulse with frequency, and then discuss threads we may want, someday in the future?

From where I stand? Yes.

My personal preference would be that we not discuss adding any new threads until, at least, mid to late October. That would give us time to resolve the technical issues, see what happens when Angel premieres and figure out what threads we're closing and what impact those closures will have. Then, if people really feel that a TV thread is needed, we discuss at that time, having a better grasp of the situation.

My fear is that the TV thread will quickly develop into its own subcommunity, much like what I'm told movies and music did. So then we've closed a few threads that weren't getting that much traffic to begin with, Natter doesn't slow down [because I think we can all agree it's unslowable] and an entirely new thread takes off. This concerns me.

So then we've closed a few threads that weren't getting that much traffic to begin with, Natter doesn't slow down [because I think we can all agree it's unslowable] and an entirely new thread takes off.

Ah. Got it.

I'm concerned that we might end up with a 6-month moratorium on a TV thread because of technical thread-creation issues. How about having an option for, "Create a TV thread, but on probation. This means that the thread will be closed if it causes us to exceed our limits on bandwidth or SQL connections, and re-opened if we find a solution to these problems."

I've always been interested in talking about other shows. Which is why I do it elsewhere, because I don't need to do it here,

I was impressed by the number of conversations you participate in here. Of course, I would be, since it took me eight minutes to compose this post, but wow. It's like the way Emeril can cook three courses in the time it takes me to cook from "A Man, A Plan, A Can."

I'm going to bed. But before I do:

I'm concerned that we might end up with a 6-month moratorium on a TV thread because of technical thread-creation issues.

IIRC, if the proposal is withdrawn and not voted on, there is no moratorium.

How about having an option for, "Create a TV thread, but on probation.

Since a vague disclaimer is nobody's friend, I'll be explicit. If we get yanked again because we're bogging down the server, expect to be spending some time at PF. I cannot guarantee that I can get us back up and certainly not back up as quickly as we were this last time. I will do my best and fight the good fight and all that but, if we start taxing the server again, IH could very well decide that we're more trouble than we're worth and we're all back to square one. Best case scenario, everyone cools their heels at PF for a few days while I throw myself on the mercy of IH and buy us a third chance.

I'm not trying to be all doomsday here but, given the HostRocket debacle, I'm more paranoid than usual. And that's saying something.

YPMV.

I very much agree with those who said that the resources issue is the most important factor in deciding our following steps regarding this (and probably other steps as well). After all, there's no point in having an open thread, any thread, if we can't post in it. Also, many thanks to the fighting-the-good-fight Kristen.

Anyway, some random thoughts that went through my mind while catching up in this thread:

- I can see two major objections to the General TV Thread: the anti-proliferation 'general' objection (that would exist to any or most new threads proposed), and the thought that it won't satisfy the needs/wishes of the people who want to discuss non-Joss&Tim-verse-TV shows.

- Regarding the intermediate conversations on multiple shows, each watched in different times by different Buffistas: it seems like this kind of thing is already happening in several threads, right? I mean, from reading here (and in Bureaucracy) it seemed like the Due South thread serves for several shows already and all sort of threads (other than Natter) had different-shows-than-the-title discussions in them, too. Could somebody who participates (unlike me) in any of these explain how things work there and then? In many cases, I believe that the 'way that evolved as things go along' is, at least, Good Enough.

- Housekeeping: the general way of things that I got is that some threads are going to be closed due to becoming unnecessary:
Spoilage Lite: Buffy
One of the BtVS threads, main or Previously (they are being combined)
Quotables Buffy (after the deathmatches)
Firefly Spoilers (after the DVDs are out and their discussion is allowed in the main thread)

- I got the feeling that existing specific-TV-shows threads, since they already developed their own sub-communities, aren't to be closed even if there is going to be a General-TV thread, right?

- Another resource usage question, regarding the beginning of the fall seasons: I'm just wondering, doesn't the end of BtvS actually free up the at least some resources (for that timing) which were used in discussion new episodes and spoilers? I mean, "Buffy" was the main focus of the board, and in the Wednesdays following a new episode the main "Buffy" thread was the highest-volume one, as far as I could see. I guess what I'm wondering is if there's any difference in resource-usage between sweeps months and this summer-reruns season, for example. Because if there is, and it's significant, maybe the relative lack of resources can be somewhat (hopefully) a bit balanced out by the lack of one major discussion topic?

- This is just a random thing, but it seems to me that Natter is a bit slower in the past couple of months than it used to be [Edit: and I am taking into account the latest technical difficulties. There are, on average, less Natter posts for me to skip catch up on when I log on in (my) morning]. I'm not saying that there's less natter, only that somewhat less of it happens in the Natter thread of late, IMHO. I guess there are very many reasons for that, both inside that thread and outside of it, and I have no idea which ones are speedier as a counter-balance (though I'm pretty sure there is some sort of balance), but I just thought I'd point it out.

- Whenever TAR was mentioned in Natter I thought someone was shouting at Tara, but that's probably just me.

Talking about thread consolidation-- I actually think Smallville could be closed. I am subscribed to Smallville and even when new shows were airing, it seems to be deader than a doornail.