And if there is a breaking point, what is it technically? And what is it socially?

I clearly feel like this is a totally moot point and we'll end up with new threads galore because it's extremely easy to get things approved. So I am sure that in a week or two we'll have a proposal for a comedy thread and so on and so on and so on.

It makes me sad because I've reached the point where it's clear that those of us who are against rampant thread creation and proliferation are just drowned out on a consistent basis and we may as well just shut the fuck up, because what's the point?

Which is the place, for me, where we've already begun to break socially.

Do we have enough users to sustain this many threads?

The reality thread seems to be booming, so there seem to be enough users for that. We've discarded threads that were underutilized before. Yes, that makes the board possibly more fluid and dynamic than some may like, but the system's in place and has worked in the past.

Personally, I don't go into the Music or Movie threads. Their presence doesn't bother me in the least, I don't feel any social lack at their presence.

We can't keep everything in Natter anymore. It's like trying to have a satisfying party with everyone crowded in one room and trying to have a conversation over everyone else. People will always pull each other over to the side to be able to concentrate on the conversation they're having, both to be able to focus and to keep from bothering everyone else. After the conversation is done, they go back and mingle with the bigger group.

Yes, things will happen off to the side that may get missed. That happens in busy places. If the main venue of interaction, ie, Natter, gets too overwhelming for the conversations that want to happen, then people will go somewhere else--and it might be someplace utterly different.

It may not be thread proliferation, it may be user proliferation, more people wanting to talk about the same things we always have, not the same people wanting to talk about more things. Five people discussing cats is a whole different dynamic from thirty people discussing cats (numbers and subjects off the top of my head). The sound level will eventually rise so far that nobody will be able to hear anything other than passing fragments.

The sound level will eventually rise so far that nobody will be able to hear anything other than passing fragments.

Is this not, after all, the supposed crux of what was happening with SPN in Boxed Set?

It may not be thread proliferation, it may be user proliferation, more people wanting to talk about the same things we always have, not the same people wanting to talk about more things.

This should be fairly easy to prove/disprove.

We can't keep everything in Natter anymore.

My immediate feeling, when I read this, is that Natter seems less busy to me than I remember it being before. So I went back and looked at the old threads.

For the first 20 Natter threads, we went through 10k posts in an average of 26 days. The next 20, the average was 34 days. The last 12, the average has been 50 days. To me, the numbers indicate that Natter is less busy than it used to be. YNMV.

Looking at these calculations, the only definitive conclusion that I can come to is that I need a freaking job.

the numbers indicate that Natter is less busy than it used to be

But is that good or bad? As many people seem to complain about not being able to keep up in Natter as complain about fragmentation.

For those of us that like Nattering, it's bad.

Yeah, I miss the speed of Natter.

I'm guessing the volume of natter means that the majority of people are ok with its speed.

Obviously there are some intractable problems here with whether people can deal with natter or not. I'm not persuaded that skipping/searching is that big a deal. That's what I do when I'm away.

Yeah, I miss the speed of Natter.

Me too.

I'd also like to second what Burrell said here:

this is rubbing the wrong way coming off that highly contentious SPN thread discussion. I just wish things could have been left alone for a while.

Me too. I think the drama bucket thread as proposed is a bad idea, especially after what happened with Boxed Set, but I just don't have the heart for this discussion right now.