(and, of course, by "stay" I meant "say," but everyone got that, right?)

I think that a general, free-for-all spoilers thread should be added to the proposal.

NSM the W&P thread, but if there are people who want it, what the Hell, we're already voting. (It, to me, feels more like something that mostly makes life easier for the people who'd like it out of Natter, without a real upside for the people who want to do them. Or, at the very least, it sounds like a huge PitA, logistically. But that may just be because I am outside of the W&P demographic.)

I'm not enamored of the Watch-and-Post thread idea, because I think it would be confusing to follow--more so than Natter, actually, as I see it, because it seems like the idea would be to take general discussion of the shows back to Natter anyway, and then we'd be left with a thread consisting mostly of "Holy shit!" and "Hey, it's what's-his-face" and very little actual content. Also, I agree with this:

And actually, I wouldn't want to start threads just to get things out of Natter -- I'd want to start them because people have more to say than can work in Natter.

I have been anti-proliferation, but honestly, if we have the resources, open all the threads people want.

I like the stuff being in Natter, but then again I never liked the show threads that much and I skip over so many discussions in Natter that show talk and whitefont don't bother me at all. It just is the nature of the thread and a board with this many people.

I don't get the concern about purpose of the board. The board is different things to different people. Basically if enough people using the board vote to have something here, then it serves the purpose. The purpose will change as people come and go and people will come and go as the board shifts.

The header is outdated and makes no sense at this point. If anything, we should change it to read something more accurate. We are a bunch of people who originally came together to discuss these shows that no longer exist. Now we are just a bunch of people who kinda know each other and will talk a lot about a variety of topics.

You know how I use Douglas Adams' books' quotes to feel out if a person I've just met is my version of cool or not?

The ME shows were like that for me. If someone was a fan of those shows in particular, there was a good chance they'd be someone I had other things and ways of looking at the world in common with. Buffistas were a group of people that had the fandom commonality, and who enjoyed those shows in a particular manner. Our "One of us, one of us!" rally cries that we indulged in when we found a soul we could communicate with? Came from interest in that particular source material.

The fear of my deep dark potentially elitist heart? That if our board gives primary focus to shows other than that we were originally drawn together over, that we will avoid stagnation at the cost of attracting an utterly different crowd of people. You might not have felt this if you didn't frequent those threads, but there was a subtle shift with even Firefly and Wonderfalls, and those I felt were in our scope. I think it will be even more marked if we build the future of our board around shows without ties to that particular breed of fiction that we all enjoy.

I don't think we've stagnated so far, and I don't think we're necessarily going to.

It doesn't mean we don't talk about other things and other shows, because boy, howdy, do we. But I don't want to need a current show thread, and I don't want to make our focus that perceived need. I don't think we're a general purpose tv board, and I would oppose threads that would make us that. So definitely, I would prefer not to have a general spoilers thread (which I see as just a general tv thread for the spoiled only) and sadly, would also prefer not to see a Lost thread.

The fear of my deep dark potentially elitist heart? That if our board gives primary focus to shows other than that we were originally drawn together over, that we will avoid stagnation at the cost of attracting an utterly different crowd of people. You might not have felt this if you didn't frequent those threads, but there was a subtle shift with even Firefly and Wonderfalls, and those I felt were in our scope. I think it will be even more marked if we build the future of our board around shows without ties to that particular breed of fiction that we all enjoy.

Liese speaks for me.

And me.

I dithered over this for a moment, because I think UDrew is writing for that show now, but decided against it.

Both Drew and Jeff Bell are with Alias now.

I also think Dead Like Me is our kind of show and would sustain some interesting discussion, but I, regretfully, feel there are two reasons it wouldn't be a good thread choice. I don't think enough people watch it, and it's only 13 episodes a year, which are almost over until this next summer assuming it's picked up again.

I believe it'll be back next season.

I have a suspicion that, should the Lost thread come to pass, Alias would become an unofficial part of the mission of the thread, esp if they both end up on the same night.

A DLM thread, to a large extent, would be like...I was going to say like having a thread for a movie or maybe series of movies, and then I realized that we have a thread for LotR. The difference, of course, being the relative lack of stuff in the off-season (ie-no concerts, or SE DVDs, etc), and, IMO, a less-rich set of texts (esp with the books). A Sunday night HBO thread would make sense, schedule-wise, but the tone of the set of shows are so different that I don't see a cohesiveness there, although the same could be said for Boxed Set, to a large extent.

But this is ground that has been covered, and, probably made a final decision on, and I'll stop talking now, and go back to Lions in Kenya.

Hmm. I understand the concerns expressed, but I'm curious. Did the new blood attracted by WF and FF threads really change attitude/culture of the board that much? I don't frequent the Minearverse thread anymore, but my feeling was the mass influx around the time of the WF cancellation didn't sustain its momentum--most of the newbies didn't stick around, and those who did hang around for the long haul did so because their wavelength/philosophy/whatever meshed with that of the Buffistas.

I'm in favor of Lost thread, not because I want us to have the kick-assiest and the most comprehensive of the Lost boards on the net, but because I want to discuss the show with Buffistas. I mean, the TwoP board is fine, but it's not *my* board. And since the show is a hit, I don't think we are in danger of being swamped by people who flock to us because there is nowhere else to discuss the show on the web (as was the case with WF). I don't want the board to become another TwoP, not at all, but as a TV/media culture junkie, the biggest draw to the Buffistas for me was that I found a bunch of people who were funny, intelligent, irreverent yet able to find depth and layers in pop-culture products--and a communal TV watching was a huge part of that. I have missed that sorely since the Angel finale, and I feel like Lost shares some of the qualities that attracted Buffistas to the Jossverse in the first place, which will make it a good fit for the board--good writing, promise of character-driven arcs, rooms for speculation/analysis (it could do with infusion of some trademark MEverse humor though.)

When the push comes to shove though, this is probably all related to how the board is different things to different people.