IT'S THE GOD'S HONEST TRUTH. YOU CAN'T DENY IT.

erikaj, I was all up for agreeing with you, then I got confuzzled about where "there" meant, and it got all loud in here. People shouting. It spooks us meek types.

If there is, so to speak, a Hamsterdam for talking about cable, The Wire fits in. You know, taking our stuff to the free zone and shit. Now I want the new thread so I can name it Cable Hamsterdam.

Cable Hamsterdam

That rocks so hard. Damn, that rocks hard.

I dont know where Rescue Me and the like came from.

I floated it to see whether people wanted to stick to a tight thread definition or a broader one.

I'm specifically talking about HBO/Showtime. That is all the proposal covers and I'm not expanding on that at all.

Ultimately this comes to compromises between the impulse to not proliferate and the urge to have focused chatter.

Pushing the HBO/Showtime shows together is one clear, bright line grouping of TV shows. It doesn't include all the shows that people are interested in, but it does include several shows which potentially could support sustained interest.

So, reverse engineering the way things have worked around here, I'd say What We Have Done is to (a) give separate threads to shows (or movies, cf. LoTR) which generate heavy volume that disrupts Natter (from this we've given VM and Lost their own separate threads); (b) created a space for Tim's projects; (c) created a group thread for sf/fantasy TV shows. I'd say we'd probably also create a thread for any Jossiverse project that came back to TV without too much dissension. (Also a Spoilers thread on said topic.)

So we don't hand out individual TV threads that are separate from the Jossverse or Tim projects. But like Jefferson, who built the paths after people had worn them in, we have made allowances for shows which have generated high volume. And we have created a group space for genre shows.

So it does seem logical (at least within our culture) to make a space for this grouping of shows.

Potentially, you could also make group threads for Reality Shows or Adult Swim. TAR and Project Runway seem to generate enough interest to sustain a Reality show thread. And I could always huddle with Teppy, bon, Scola, Tommyrot and Theo about new Venture Brothers.

But I'm not proposing those. Just using them as examples.

Damn, DavidS is cute when he gets all categorical.

I am marking that as a "yeah!" for Allyson's thing.

Thank you, Gus. I thought you'd like that. And it fits, too, as we wouldn't be disrupting the movie-going citizens anymore and they could have their corner back.

(c) created a group thread for sf/fantasy TV shows.

Which was originally three separate threads (for shows that are now no longer discussed in the thread originally named after them).

No, I don't have a point. Just trying to keep things accurate.

I'm against this proposal for a variety of reasons, many of which have clarified for me over the course of this discussion, but I don't think anyone wants to hear another antiproliferationista rant from me, so I'll stay (mostly) quiet until it's time to vote.

What Jessica said, about the history of Boxed Set. It was a squishing-together of 3 threads that didn't really consider themselves alike, due to board issues. (The idea was it would reduce volume.)

Today, Boxed Set is the Media Fandom thread, which is why non-sci fi shows like MI-5/Spooks pop up there now and then. (To say nothing of pairing portmanteau discussion.) Boxed Set became the Media Fandom thread because that was the one thing that the Farscape, Smallville, and Due South/Stargate crowds all had in common. And, as these things go, media fandom isn't going away, so the likelihood that Boxed Set will continue to thrive are high.

I don't have that sense of groundswell support for HBO/SHO. Actually, I am looking at other recent new threads, and wondering how long Lost will continue. That show seems to have fallen off sharply, while Veronica Mars has fallen a bit but continues to generate a reasonably steady volume of discussion.

Okay, maybe it just the terms "Boxed Set". If it is about medium, make it about medium.

Just because it plays on a TV tube doesn't make it the same medium.