I just want to bring up one point that I haven't seen addressed.

There are those who have asked why book club devotees can't hold the book club in Literary, and just skip and skim past the posts that are unrelated to the club. I get the impression, perhaps incorrectly, that those asking this question don't see this as much of an inconvenience.

The analogy that comes to my mind is the "MARCIE" user filter. If it's not much of an inconvenience for the book club, then surely it's even less of an inconvenience to skip and skim past posters that annoy you. And yet, few people have said we shouldn't code the user filter because of that. But it's a lot easier to ID and skip past a post by someone you don't like, than to ID and skip past a post with content you don't like.

It's a minor point, but hopefully it will help us understand each other a little better. {{{group hug}}}

The analogy that comes to my mind is the "MARCIE" user filter. If it's not much of an inconvenience for the book club, then surely it's even less of an inconvenience to skip and skim past posters that annoy you.

I, for one, am not a proponent of the MARCIE filter. I often skip and skim past posters who annoy me and don't find it an inconvenience at all.

IJS.

And I respect your consistancy! ;^)

Huh. I feel like there have been a fair number of objections to MARCIE using that exact argument.

How does MARCIE tax resources?

It's an extra table to query every time someone loads a page.

[edit: whoops, I meant table, not database]

But an extra query uses a fraction of the resources that an extra connection does. My a-p issues have always been that I feel more threads means more posting and more traffic and, in the end, more connections.

That said, if someone wanted to put the MARCIE plan on hiatus until the connections issue is resolved, I wouldn't complain.

Oh, I wasn't trying to argue against MARCIE. It's a feature that's been planned since before the board was born, and I don't see any reason to put it on hold.

This will be an interesting vote.

Hopefully not in the Chinese sense.

I just realized. I'm having an existential crisis. Consequently, I've also realized that the worst thing that could happen with the book club is that in a matter of weeks, people will lose interest.

Funny how it takes monolithic real life headaches to put these things in perspective.

How does MARCIE tax resources?

In my brain, that's a separate issue from the one that MM and others raised. YBMV.

I feel like there have been a fair number of objections to MARCIE using that exact argument.

It feels to me like the issue has been raised more vehemently for the book club, but it was a while ago that we discussed the pros/cons of the user filter, so I may be misremembering. I remember lots of people saying they wouldn't use the filter, but not that many who said they objected to it. [shrug]