We should keep Sang Sacre open as housing for people exiled from Bitches and Natter.

Sang Sacre is not even remotely a Bitches/Natter substitute.

Ok, some excellent ideas there Cindy. A few comments:

5. Due South, Smallville and perhaps Farscape will be consolidated in some way.

I think we should just create a Due South/Smallville/Farscape thread. Don't call it "Fannish TV" or "genre TV". Call it by its name, and clearly state its purpose in the thread slug, so that people won't assume it's a general tv thread.

Someone suggested above that Firefly and Farscape might make a good fit - that seems a great idea to me, if the Farscapers agree. Instead of merging DS/SV/F into one, I'd like to consider whether Farscape could be added to Firefly without causing problems. That still leaves DS and SV - I'm still leery of changing those, especially as SV gears up for a new season, but it would be less disruptive, and less likely to devolve into a Gen TV thread than merging the three into one.

I'm willing to absent myself from the Firefly threads until I get my hands on the DVDs sometime down the line if it means we can go back to one thread there.

When (if?) the deathmatches finish, it's been suggested a few times already that the Buffy quotables thread close. Elena's dropping them for two weeks already while she's away. This should hopefully give us the time to see how big a contributer they might have been before deciding to resume. At any rate, we should be more than able to finish them in Sept., well before the new Angel season begins. So if we can, I'd rather let that thread come to it's natural end than chop it off now. But if it's a big deal then go for it.

That leaves Angel and FF. I think most of us could live with closing FF - though it would be nice to be able to reopen it somewhere down the line for its own closing deathmatch, once everyone is up to date. As for Angel, if we can keep it open during the season I think we should - though that's one place where we can stomp on the natter a little bit harder.

I'm not sure folding LOTR into movies at this point is wise. I went into more detail on why last night.

On the fic threads, I think there's a useful distinction to be kept between the threads where people post fic and where they talk about it. If we could cut it down to two threads, though, that would seem to be plenty.

We should keep Sang Sacre open as housing for people exiled from Bitches and Natter.

Sang Sacre is not even remotely a Bitches/Natter substitute.

And we're not going to shut Bitches and Natter? Right? Anyhow?

Someone suggested above that Firefly and Farscape might make a good fit - that seems a great idea to me, if the Farscapers agree.

Er....oh god please nonononono. (I might be the only one who feels that way, in which case, combine away, but....)

Someone suggested above that Firefly and Farscape might make a good fit - that seems a great idea to me, if the Farscapers agree.

Er....oh god please nonononono. (I might be the only one who feels that way, in which case, combine away, but....)

Heh. SO with Jess on this, but I'll certainly live if the two are combined.

Let's talk about putting what came from Natter back into Natter and what came from Bitches back into Bitches.

I will agree to this if, and only if, it can be accompanied by an admin smearing ashes over the closed threads and intoning "Remember thou art Natter, and to Natter thou shalt return".

Combine all Fan Fiction threads.

All: Fan Fiction, Bitchy Fic, PPO, Bitches' Anthology.

And here I was, swearing that I wasn't going to get into this. Everyone's going to have selfish reactions, and there's no chance in hell any consolidation will make everyone happy, but:

The different between Fan Fiction and the other threads is that no fic is actually posted there. That makes it work safe, and it means that no one has to page through posts and posts of fic in order to get to discussion. I know this comes up every time, and most people don't post in any of those threads, but Fan Fiction was opened for a different purpose.

I have to say, I think that the stupidest suggestion I've seen so far is that we get rid of Natter and Bitches so that we can continue to cater to the 10 peeps who want to discuss X, Y, or Z in the individie threads,

Well, the suggestion was not made out of any desire to keep a smaller thread, the suggestion was made because the problem is too many posters making too many posts.

Too many posters make too many posts in Natter and Bitches, not Farscape and Smallville. Getting rid of Farscape and Smallville isn't going help, even a little.

I wasn't entirely serious, because as many people pointed out, that's where the heart of our community lives.

Let's talk about putting what came from Natter back into Natter and what came from Bitches back into Bitches.

You mean Music, Movies, and Literature, right Trudy?

Unfortunately, everybody already bitches about how fast Natter and Bitches moves, and we're going to lose people if we get rid of those threads. (Of course, there's a risk of losing people no matter what we do).

But also, our heart may live in Natter and Bitches, but part of the flavor of the board comes from having a place to talk about music, movies, and books.

As ita points out, we're still at the "let's see if killing the quote generator helps," stage, so we're not really talking about closing any threads but the smaller ones, just for housekeeping's sake.

But if we have to make big changes, we need to discuss who we are, and what we want to do, and try and find a way to do itso that we don't have to have the same discussion in possibly as little as a year's time (or less) if Angel ever gets cancelled.

We'll need threads that help define who we are, and what we like, and give us room to chat on broad but descriptive topics, and allow us to natter, but aren't so braod and bloated that they cause server problems, which is really the main issue.

But what if the problem is exactly Natter and Bitches? Closing them may be exactly what we have to do to save the board

Depends on how you define "the board." A lot of people now consider Natter and Bitches to be the central part of "the board." And therefore -- to those people -- getting rid of Natter and Bitches isn't *saving* "the board"; it's getting rid of "the board".

Pretty much agree with Cindy.

Consolidating/trimming threads in the logical way people have been suggesting above -- fair enough. Can't argue with that.

imho the core of this board comprises the the ME show threads, Bitches and Natter. Culling them in favour of the more recent topic threads like music, movies, Smallville etc? Throwing out the baby with the bathwater, to my mind. I know that isn't something that's top of the list, but it is being suggested so ijs.

As an UnAmerican, I pretty much don't hang in the show threads, because I don't get the show at the same time as you folks. My own board experience is therefore centred around Bitches, with forays into other threads and Nillying the Show threads when I finally get to see episodes. I'm here for the community, with its integral MEverse obsession, rather than for the show discussions, for simple reasons of geography.

That said, given that this board is primarily American, I wouldn't suggest prioritising the needs/wishes of UnAmerican over those of you folks -- because it's your backyard we're gratefully playing in. If it needs restructuring in such a way that it's going to ghettoise groups in order to have a board at all, then so be it. As has been said, there's WX, there's LJ, there's People's Forum, and if the majority of Buffistas want/need a streamlined environment without Bitches or Natter, then Go Team Democracy, and all that.

(I'll be in the Egyptian desert looking for the Creme Brullee and de Nile.)

considers typing a grinning emoticon. resists temptation.