It clears up where you have decided to draw the line, but it still seems arbitrary to me.

Of course it's arbitrary. Everything on this board is arbitrary to an extent.

Look, LoTR discussions threatened to swamp Natter...so we have a thread for that. Music discussions threatened to swamp Natter, or so some would have you believe...and we have a separate thread for that.

But no "discussion" is threatening to swamp Literary. The argument seems to be "We *want* to have discussion". So go ahead. Or the argument is "We don't want to disrupt Lit". Well how do we know you will? You haven't managed to have a discussion.

Ultimately, like most thread proposals, we will come to a vote and I will shrug no matter the outcome. But none of the arguments for this proposal make sense to me.

To put it bluntly...if you can't manage to coordinate a discussion about one book in the book thread, I see that as a failure of the poster, not the thread itself. If we want to pander to that, fine.

All the ME shows. There are still plenty of us watching other shows, which then get whitefont discussion in Natter.

Yes. I hate that. I can't find the discussion!

I totally get Plei's comparison to the comics thread, but I think the Book Club thread would be higher posting volume than comics currently is. Right now Comics is a small band of freaks, but if it got way bigger, possibly all the Green Arrow discussion that would burst forth exuberantly would drive me nuts. I don't really know.

I don't.

I can read three comics with reasonable depth of reading within half an hour and then yammer about 'em. Books, they take longer. And I don't really see that we'd have more people talking about books than we do comics. Top of my head, there's a good baker's dozen regular posters in the J-verse thread.

Squee and actual content discussions live side by side, hand in glove, blah blah blah in the Comics thread. They always did in the Buffy and Angel threads. I think it's an artificial distinction to separate them.

And again, I can only say that the impression I got from the regular posters in Literary was that it's very much a real and un-artificial distinction to them, that many of the people who have given the thread the cozy, ramshackle atmosphere Robin describes regard critical discussion as hostile, as something that would turn the thread that they've invested time and energy in into a place where they feel belittled and talked over and like they have no voice and no place.

I want a Buffista book club, but I don't want it so badly that I'm willing to make these people feel like second-class citizens in what is, by seniority and participation level, kinda their own thread. I'd much, much rather have a separate thread.

See, I think a baker's dozen is small. But that's neither here nor there.

And I don't really see that we'd have more people talking about books than we do comics.

Yeah, I don't have a good sense of how many people would Book Club it.

Like I said, I'm actually neutral on a Buffista discussion. Shock!

And Pokemon is on, which is my cue to get my ass over to the workout room, so I'm off.

Of course it's arbitrary. Everything on this board is arbitrary to an extent.

I don't have a problem with arbitrary. It just seemed like your argument was trying to be more substantive than that, and I was having a hard time figuring it out.

But no "discussion" is threatening to swamp Literary.

Well, no but I think that if we were all discussing the same book it might. I think the thing with the literary thread is that it was- from what I was getting from the discussion last week- the opposite. That getting into picking apart a book, like one of the shows, wasn't happening in there for reasons other than the individual poster.

Well, no but I think that if we were all discussing the same book it might. I think the thing with the literary thread is that it was- from what I was getting from the discussion last week- the opposite. That getting into picking apart a book, like one of the shows, wasn't happening in there for reasons other than the individual poster.

A dedicated thread would only solve one of the problems, and that's the simple one of common point of discussion.

In US time, each show took place once a week, for an hour, over a three time-zone spread that allowed for maximum concentration of discussion immediately following that period. There's no way to do that with books.

Even the book discussion in LotR doesn't ever reach that level of posting, and there you had people who'd mainly already read it, in a thread dedicated to that universe.

But it had enough that it needed it's own thread. And while it wouldn't be dedicated to one universe it would be dedicated to one book (at a time mostly). With LotR, you have people who are interested in LotR- in either book or movie form. With a book, you'd have people who are interested in reading and discussing many universes. I think that has the potential to be a huge number of posts.

(Glad to be arguing with someone else so it doesn't feel like I'm harping on MM who I adore).

With a book, you'd have people who are interested in reading and discussing many universes. I think that has the potential to be a huge number of posts.

I don't get the feeling that it would, both from the number of people who've seemed enthused about it and from the reasons I listed earlier as to why I didn't feel that posting would get out of hand anymore than it has in the comics thread. Which is yet another reason to try it in the lit thread and see what happens.

The addition of the LotR thread, as MM said, was because it was threatening to swamp something already. In that respect, it was an organic outgrowth of existing discussion.

Book club, well, that's still an untested theory. If you're right, then it will be obvious to many that it needs its own space. If I'm right, then people have found a new way to connect within an existing space.