Katuie, I certainly think Kristen's concerns and input is important. What I wonder is if, by consolidating some threads and archiving others, we could effectively "cancel out" the impact a new thread would have on the database.

We'd have to figure out how much traffic we'd actually be eliminating - look at the topics, figure out how many posts per week, yada yada. My instinct is that none of the topics we'd end up consolidating or archiving are very high-volume, but I could be wrong.

That's probably true, Katie.

I admit, I just feel like since May (in fact, since we knew there would be no S8), we've been saying "we have to redo the thread hierarchy now that Buffy's off the air," and since May, it's been put off until August. Now we're saying that for technical reasons, it should wait until October. Who's to say that in October, we won't feel like we have equally compelling reasons to put it off? I don't think having dead threads or unclear thread titles is the worst thing in the world, but I do think that if it can be done relatively painlessly (both technically and socially), we may as well do it now.

This is probably my impatient side talking, isn't it?

What I wonder is if, by consolidating some threads and archiving others, we could effectively "cancel out" the impact a new thread would have on the database.

Not really. Threads we're likely to want to close/consolidate/archive are going to be the lowest-traffic ones. (Buffy Spoilage Lite, for example -- sure, we could close it, but that wouldn't affect our server usage since people aren't reading or posting in it.) New threads will increase posting volume, and tax the server even more than we're doing now.

So unless we're archiving threads and replacing them with lower-volume ones, no, consolidating threads won't offset the traffic increase from adding new ones.

Oh, I wouldn't mind going ahead and consolidating at least now, whether or not it had any effect on our resource drain. I already said I think Quotables should close with Elena's post of the One True Buffy Quote. Buffy Spoilers Light can obviously go. Then we just have to decide whether to dump Previously or the main topic - I'd vote Previously. That'd be satisfying on a cleaning-up-the-house level, at least.

We'd have to do another proposal, though.

A lot of natter moved from Natter to Bitches in the last few months, particularly when there was a lot of interpersonal disruption. That said, I don't think the overall level of natterish posting has gone down in any way. There's a ton of natter going on in Lit, F2F, and sundry other threads.

It does begin to sound to me like we need a dedicated server, and that's a sizeable piece of change to drum up. We need a sugar daddy.

Then we just have to decide whether to dump Previously or the main topic - I'd vote Previously.

Except that Angel's about to go into syndication, and I think people were expecting to use Previously for that.

I admit, I just feel like since May (in fact, since we knew there would be no S8), we've been saying "we have to redo the thread hierarchy now that Buffy's off the air," and since May, it's been put off until August. Now we're saying that for technical reasons, it should wait until October.

Maybe I'm misreading things, but I think we're actually not putting off the restructuring of our threads until October, we're talking about putting off talk of a new TV thread until we've restructured.

I think we're actually not putting off the restructuring of our threads until October, we're talking about putting off talk of a new TV thread until we've restructured.

This makes sense to me.

Except that Angel's about to go into syndication, and I think people were expecting to use Previously for that.

Oh, good point. I'd forgotten Angel doesn't have its own Previously thread.

...and I just realized this conversation is already happening in Bureaucracy, so I'll move it there.

We've been saying since May that we need to restructure now that there's no more new Buffy. But there hasn't been any real discussion of what to do. Based on Kristen's comments, techno-not-really-literate I assume that restructuring now, especially if we add attractive new threads, could wreak havoc on the board.

I'm suggesting that we use this time to figure out what we really want to do and where we want the board to go.

IOW, my answer to

I admit, I just feel like since May (in fact, since we knew there would be no S8), we've been saying "we have to redo the thread hierarchy now that Buffy's off the air," and since May, it's been put off until August. Now we're saying that for technical reasons, it should wait until October.

is, let's start planning now with a target completion date in mind.