And I too was curious about the question Jessica brought up and withdrew.

You don't consider it to have been answered? (Serious question - Jess asked "is it A or B," at least two or three people said "neither." If there are people who don't agree with that answer, by all means speak up. But I did sort of think the question had been addressed.

A and B are talking about X book. What's stopping you from popping in, saying "Anybody else read Z? LOVED IT!" so that Person D can say "Yo! I read Z and I loved it up until the demon-monkeys ate the frog princess and then I was all 'Shah! Whatev!'"

Well, it's been fairly well kerfuffed that something is stopping us. Whether it's occasional in-thread resistance, or the dimness of memory making people not want to get too in depth without going back and taking another look, or just the pace or structure of the thread, well, who knows. What we do know is that a number of people do not feel like that particular thread is a fertile environment, and this is a partial attempt to address that.

Wolfram, I'm still not seeing why you can't set that up in Lit. If one person is a morning poster and the other is an afternoon poster, being in a different thread isn't going to change that. Adding another thread isn't going to increase the time to read a given book or facilitate Persons C-Z discussion of said book if they've read it. So far, this Book Club thread just sounds like a recommendation to read a book with deadlines. Nothing about that needs a whole new thread.

I'm anti-prolif, and still unclear on why the current lit thread-- unsatisfying because of the lack of discussion focus-- is inhospitable to focusing. Why is it a problem that everyone talks about one book at once? What is the likelihood that there will be a lot of "noise" if there are lots of people reading the same book? Like a show thread, it can discuss both the current book and books in general. To sum up, I don't see what will be disturbed by attempting book club in Literary.

Some of the proliferation concerns seem remote because we have a dedicated server, however temporarily, and no foreseeable population explosions. But there is still the concern of the slippery slope of simply adding threads unjustifiably and grandfathering those threads in. Separating discussions is one thing-- creating an LotR thread to keep it from derailing natter-- but creating them of whole cloth when we feel like it is kind of a bad precedent to set.

There's nothing stopping you from finding people who have read Z or telling somebody "Dude! Z! Read it, it rocks!" and getting people to read it and talk about it in Lit rather than starting a whole new thread.

People do suggest that people read what they like, it just never turns into discussion because 12 other people are suggesting what they like. Which is good. If I'm about to go to the bookstore I can hunt back through Literary for stuff I might like, but by the time I've had a chance to buy it and read it, and come back to talk about it, it's been a while. So I say- I just read whateverthebookwas! By then there are new recs, not a lot of discussion.

I guess the question is: would incorporating a Book Club into Literary derail Literary's current function?

I'm not sure that we couldn't do it in that thread. I would worry that the people who have no interest in reading whatever we've chosen would get bored looking for reccomendations or info on the latest Harry Potter (assuming that's not what we were reading) and feel they'd been pushed out of a thread they enjoyed.

Separating discussions is one thing-- creating an LotR thread to keep it from derailing natter-- but creating them of whole cloth when we feel like it is kind of a bad precedent to set.

Is this really so different, though? I mean, for me the biggest argument in favor is that I think the separation will improve the discussion - but the flip side to the argument is exactly to keep it from derailing the Lit thread as it has developed.

By then there are new recs, not a lot of discussion.

So encourage the discussion. If SoandSo recced a book and you read it and come back, address SoandSo. "Took your rec and thought it sucked!" or whatever.

Not trying to be a hardass, but to me it's seeming more and more that a Book Club thread isn't so much about "discussing specific books" but not wading through other peoples' posts while you do it. And, no offense meant to anyone, but I don't see why we should start generating threads based on that. I'm not up to speed on the Bat-family...should I split off from Jossverse and propose a thread that talk only about Powers so's I don't have to wade through Plei's (very illuminating, really, no insult) lengthy treatise on Dick Grayson's fffaaaabulous butt?

You don't consider it to have been answered?

No, I wasn't clear.

I was curious about it; I'm glad Jessica asked it that's all I meant.

Not trying to be a hardass, but to me it's seeming more and more that a Book Club thread isn't so much about "discussing specific books" but not wading through other peoples' posts while you do it.

Actually, you have it backwards. It's not about not being bothered with other people's posts, it's about them not having to deal with upmty-hundred posts about one thing they want nothing to do with.