I don't recall any member of Literary who wasn't advocating a Book Club thread expressing any concern whatsoever that this would happen. This seems to me to be an argument made up by advocates of the Book Club thread.

Er, I was the first one to raise this issue, and I don't particularly want a Book Club thread.

Like the Firefly and Wonderfalls threads?

There isn't a Wonderfalls thread, unless you mean spoilers, and the Firefly has had on-topic posts as recently as yesterday.

Once open, really hard to close. Which is why I figure that if a book club won't work in Literary, we'll soon know if we try. Then open a thread.

she always is as a rule

Well, the issue still exists -- until that changes, why should I?

Can we not point fingers at anyone IOW "It's your fault you can't get a good discussion going." and "It's their fault we can't do it in an existing thread."?

I don't recall any member of Literary who wasn't advocating a Book Club thread expressing any concern whatsoever that this would happen. This seems to me to be an argument made up by advocates of the Book Club thread.

In light of the first part of this post (something shiny) I don't see how having a thread specifically for it is going to suddenly engender a commitment and focus that you can't maintain in Literary. If you can't do it now, why should I believe you can do it in a Book Club thread?

MM, I guess the question I have is, short of a resource issue, why be concerned? If people want to talk amongst themselves about any issue, and especially if no one is specifically excluded from joining them, what's the harm? It seems to me that the real dollar concern over greater server space is more of an issue. ita, since I don't know where you posted about this, is this board approaching capacity to the point that we need to think about greater server space if we take on another thread or was your position against the book club based on something else?

Edit - OK, that seems like a partial answer. ita is opposed to new threads on principle, but not necessarily because of a new crisis specific to this thread. Does that seem accurate?

I wasn't saying you should. I was just saying that it comes up with every thread.

voting is what day?

ita is opposed to new threads on principle, but not necessarily because of a new crisis specific to this thread. Does that seem accurate?

Any step that gets us more locked into needing more expensive infrastructure is a bad thing -- that is my basic principle. Additional threads are such a step. This thread may be worse than others, I don't know, I'm not getting that far into analysing ahead of data.

I was just saying that it comes up with every thread.

Well, yeah. I'd hate that to devalue it, just because I always say it. I mention it because it's true.

voting is what day?

Proposed on the 5th, so 4 days discussion takes us to the 9th.

Any step that gets us more locked into needing more expensive infrastructure is a bad thing -- that is my basic principle. Additional threads are such a step. This thread may be worse than others, I don't know, I'm not getting that far into analysing ahead of data.

That's a pretty good reason not to have a new thread in my book. But it does mean that we should consider internal resources. I mean, is one recent on-topic post in the Firefly thread (which I really don't have anything against, but it seems like an easy target given that the show's been cancelled for well over a year) worth however many posts people feel like they might contribute to the Book Club thread? If additional threads are too much a drain on resources, then shouldn't we conduct periodic reviews of existing threads to make room for new discussions? Or should we just never start new discussions?

This push for structure definition, is to me, another burden being placed on this proposed thread (the first would be insisting Wolfram insert an I'll-shut-it-down clause), that we never insist upon for other threads.

Okay. Except that's not true.

When the Minear thread was proposed, we did discuss how the thread was going to work and what it's focus was going to be. Was it just for Wonderfalls discussion or all things Minear or were we going to talk about whether or not Tim mows his own lawn. We also discussed whether or not was going to be NAFDA and what the spoiler rules were going to be.

I don't feel that asking the proposer to clarify how this new thread is going to work is an unreasonable request. For me, a lot of threads, like the general TV one, sound good in practice. Then we start talking about how it would actually work and I realize it would be, for me, a flipping nightmare and I'd never use it.

one recent on-topic post in the Firefly thread (which I really don't have anything against, but it seems like an easy target given that the show's been cancelled for well over a year)

There's a forthcoming movie, and people are linking to cast and crew postings on other boards. Firefly-the-topic is very much alive.