I pretty strongly feel that it will work better in a separate thread. Not that it couldn't work otherwise. But that it will be more likely to work and develop in its own thread. I also feel (and I'm not speaking for anyone but my own self here) that the lit thread as it stands works better (for me) with the sort of here-there-everywhere discussion that goes on there now.

I'm a little taken aback at (what seems to me to be) the voiciferous opposition to this idea. I really never expected it to be so contentious.

As to resource issues - are we really in such a bad state? And is a specialty thread really such a big deal? We've got spoiler threads for not just one but three shows that are no longer on the air. I'm not suggesting that those are a problem, or should be gone, or anything like that. I'm just saying, we're not exactly so lean and mean that one (probably smallish) new thread is the one that will put us over the top. At any rate, won't we be losing a thread soon when the Angel deathmatches finish?

I will believe that the current Literary thread is inhospitable to a book club when I see the experiment tried and failed.

This has been responded to over and over. My reasons against starting the club in literary include:

1) Discussions of other books during a book club discussion is extremely distracting and counterproductive. I see no way to make this compatible with the literary thread. It would be like holding deathmatches in Natter. This is my Main Objection to starting in Literary.

2) If this club were to repurpose literary into the book club thread there would be resentment from previous users of literary. What we've heard so far from many literary users is a) they want a separate book club thread so they can continue to use literary as they always have, for book recs and discussion of assorted books; b) they're not using literary anymore anyway so feel free to use it however you want; or c) nothing, because there was a recent kerfuffle in Literary and people just can't seem to separate the kerfuffle from this proposal.

A Book Club is not a conversation. It is a serious endeavor that requires participants, commitment, and focus. It cannot be made a part of an existing thread. So unless we turn Literary into Book Club and disallow discussion of other books, it just won't work.

I think we can fairly say, and this ties into the subcommunities part of this discussion, that there are different thread cultures in different threads on this board. Bitches is different as a place to hang out in from Music. Literary is different, too.

I read this proposal as "The culture in the existing book thread isn't what I want it to be, so I want a new book thread."

Since Betsy is quoting me here, I should note that I didn't say the above in support of the book club thread, and I am not the proposer of the thread.

I read this proposal as "The culture in the existing book thread isn't what I want it to be, so I want a new book thread."

As someone who brought it up in the first place, that's not what was going on. There were a number of people who said the reason we weren't having the kind of critical discussions about books was that Literary was not set up to be that. I can see that, so I mentioned that maybe we could set something up to be that.

I can't help but think there needs to be venting of all the issues that keep swarming around, but have actually very little to do with what it seems was proposed.

How long between proposals?

Is a personal dispute thread out of line?

I don't think that the "culture" in Literary is inimical to extended book discussions; I think it's mainly the lack of critical mass. When only a few people have read the book, you get this type of discussion:

Poster 1: Did anyone read The Story of XYZ?

Poster 2: I did.

Poster 1: Did they really end up in a threesome at the end?

Poster 2: It was ambiguous, but I thought Bob ended up with the gay neighbor.

Poster 3 (who read the book 10 years ago) thinks: There was a threesome?

I think the book club idea is more likely to be successful as a separate, reduced-natter thread.

I'm not sure if I understand the anti-book club thread argument. Is it because of:

• concern over resources?
• concern over divisiveness to the community?
• concern over feelings of rejection to those who don't want to participate but who do want to participate in the lit thread?

For the record, I'm in favor of a book club thread, but not sure if I'm going to participate regularly after the start. I'm game to try, though. We tried this on my other board, and it didn't go very well, though. Still, I got to re-read Pale Fire, so it wasn't a wash.

my issue is over resources.

my issue is over resources.

That, to me, is the most compelling argument. I don't want to have to pony up more often just so part of the community can have their own place, even if I'm in that part of the community. That said, I've never set foot into Bitches, even once, so I'm not sure if the whole pay-to-play scenario is even accurate.

Has anyone in the know about resources weighed in on the issue? I've only read back about 100 posts.