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IIRC, if the proposal is withdrawn and not voted on, there is no moratorium.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

need some modicum of organization, or my head explodes.

Allyson speaks for me on this, except her metaphor about the junk drawer is better than anything I would've come up with.

What about Nilly-fying TV discussions as they happen in various random other threads? NOT asking Nilly to do this, but while I don't mind skipping TV-related discussion (whitefont or not) in threads I read, I've also missed TV-related discussions I would've liked to read, because they happened in places I don't go.

Or, we just let the dueSouth thread evolve, the way the JossverseOther thread has become the comics thread.

This is what I think, not necessarily in any order:

I think we need a clearly labeled thread or threads to talk about other TV shows, so people who are interested can find the discussion. I don't think this means you can never talk about TV in Natter or Bitches, or other shows in the Farscape and Smallville threads or whatever, just that substantial conversation should be in one place.

I think getting the approval to open a separate thread for every TV show we watch would be a headache that no one wants to deal with, especially since that's likely to change without notice -- Tru Calling could get cancelled really quickly, or we could all end up immersed in some show no one thought about until the day it aired (see: "The OC."). I have nothing against threads grouping shows together, but the difficulty there will be deciding where a show goes. It also doesn't help the spoilage thing, if (say) I want to talk about Due South, but it's in the HoYay thread with Smallville and I haven't seen the new Smallville yet.

I think the spoilage thing could be either a major stumbling block, or nothing at all. Posters in the Movies thread have stuck only losely to our spoilage guidelines, and as far as I know no one's ever complained about being spoiled there. On the other hand, there are more TV shows people are watching at any one time than movies, so there's more to be spoiled about.

And I agree that we should figure out thread consolidation first, before we make a new thread. But I don't want to put this conversation off for six months while we do that.

Re: the resource draining issue

It just occurred to me that if we're using to many SQL connections during the off season, how are we ever going to keep from breaking the board once Angel starts up again?