One of the reasons I like the bucket threads is that I actually interact with more people now. As Plei mentioned, Natter and Bitches have become the core community threads here. I know there are people who float effortless between the two, but I've never been one of those. I stick predominantly to Bitches with a few minor forays into Natter (more right now since I'm unemployed.) There are folks who stick strictly to Bitches and those who are only found in Natter. The bucket threads (and the individual show threads) make it possible for me to talk to and interact with more people than I do with just Bitches. I can see where the folks who are primarily Natterites would feel like they were losing something with more of the TV talk being shunted to new threads, but for me it's a net gain. I feel more a part of the community with the bucket threads than when more of the TV is in Natter.

My inclination though is to not treat the Experimental threads as successful experiments that need to be permanently enshrined, but to Slow Down and see what the subdivisions do to the community before we create more.

We did the Experimentals to see if there was a market for them. I'm getting the impression that a lot of people are very dismayed to find that, yes, there is a thriving market for dividing the interaction, as opposed to staying with the one big happy family around the dinner table model.

I very definitely had the impression that the test run of the Experimentals would be followed by serious consideration of real threads. I'm really getting the feeling that some people were hoping that we'd be content with our little experiments but that we wouldn't actually have the gall to propose something that might affect The Way We've Always Done Things.

I don't believe that anything proposed here endangers the community. I do believe there is the potential for fairly significant change. I'm not certain why these particular changes are so disturbing. I do know I don't like the idea of being told, "Now, dears, can't you just hold your little conversation there to the side? We really don't think it's a good idea for you to be allowed out of the room." It's making me feel a tad revolutionary.

I am no doubt a huge old alarmist, let's just acknowledge that upfront. But I do think there is something to at least begin to be alarmed about.

connie, you've been a part of this online community practically since its inception at TT. Why have you stayed this long? Could it be because of the people, the style of communication, the tone and flavor of the conversation, any of those things? All those things?

I certainly don't mind if you in particular have the thread that's obviously important to you. What upsets me is the follow-on that everyone on the board is equally entitled to a thread they want just as much.

I used to walk down the corridors at school, lined on both sides with practice rooms. About eight feet square, you'd have one or two musicians, singers, or actors closeted behind a closed door, working on assignments. It was quite lovely walking along, passing violin, piano, oboe, tenor aria, trumpet, guitar, each thing, one after the other, each separate, wrapped in its own little cubicle.

But it wasn't a symphony. At no point did any of those fragments connect and become a whole. They were just isolated fragments.

This is where the alarmist part comes in. I fear rather than a community we may become a constellation of tiny chat rooms revolving around a hollow core where Natter and Bitches and multipurpose threads used to be. Where a lot of people got together and talked about many things, now there are just fragments of sound from all the little isolated threads.

Am I being silly? Maybe. But this is a very real fear for me. There are other places dedicated to discussing one single show, one single subject. There are no other places like this one. I think what we have is unique and precious, and I think it's worth preserving enough to go slow, and figure out how we want to accomodate as many people as possible without damaging the unique board that we have.

I proposed the experimentals to get a feeling for how we'd talk about TV shows that are less obviously Buffista hits, outside of Natter. I didn't propose them to see if there was a market for them, themselves. Although I realized there might be, I honestly thought they were too broad to work for anything but the short amount of time we set for the experiment.

Apropos of nothing except that it just popped into my head, I am with brenda (I think it was brenda), in that I was a little disappointed that the cable drama thread was the first to be proposed. It felt terribly rushed.

I personally hate talking TV in Natter. It doesn't work for me. Ever. I am very on-and-off with both Natter and Bitches. Sometimes I love them, sometimes I can't keep up with them for the life of me, no matter what -- slow down or not. They may be the heart of the board, but they're not the whole of it for me, or even the half of it. I did come here to talk about TV, and I made a lot of dear friends doing that -- friends who are more important to me than this subject.

Here's what I honestly think is going on with our TV situation. I might be wrong, but this has always been my impression. I think there are a handful of shows that enough of us watch, that would work in their own threads. I was hoping those shows would become obvious to us during the experiment. I kind of thought they did, actually. I think though, that some of us are hesitant to propose single show threads, for the sake of the anti-proliferationists among us, so we keep proposing buckets as a compromise, which is still proliferation, and which doesn't work for some people (even those who don't mind proliferation) because of the spoiler issue.

We're not using any good (to me) criteria in proposing the buckets. We're not matching shows. We're just duplicating the admittedly artificial divisions of the experimentals. I could be wrong about all this, but it's the vibe I get, whenever we have this converation.

I honestly don't care any more. I feel further and further from this board each day. It makes me feel sad, but I'm just tired of the tension that arises when people dare speak their minds. The Supernatural conversation turned me off of us and our group dynamics in a way so huge I can't even express it. It felt like a cyber-text version of "The Pack."

Maybe I'm just (physically) tired and that's having an effect on my outlook. I don't know. Good luck solving this. I haven't the foggiest clue what to do.

I wasn't surprised that Cable Drama was the first proposed because there are new shows and new episodes that people want to talk about unlike the Network stuff that's all in reruns and won't be new until September. Network Drama could have been proposed first, but other than talking about reruns I'm not sure what discussion would have gone right now.

They may be the heart of the board, but they're not the whole of it for me, or even the half of it.

Cindy said it much better than I did. If I had her spicy brains, I would have said it this way the first time.

I came to the board because of a TV show. I popped into Bitches early on because of the thread name. I only stuck around for a little while before I popped right back out and declared to myself that I would never darken its doors again. This was in the middle of the contretemps with she-who-shall-not-be-named. The tone of the thread at that time was so offputting, I got the feeling that the original denizens were a bunch of bitchy, stuck up snobs and being a n00b with no idea of the social dynamics that had been put in place long before I ever arrived, I decided I was better off without it and stuck to just the show threads. I don't know how long it was before I decided to give it another chance and found that it really was a warm and welcoming place where I felt safe exposing my emotions. But I didn't leave the show threads and just because I joined the Bitches didn't mean I was going to desert the show threads

So, I learned a couple of things through all this.

1) Group dynamics change as new members join and old members leave. Fact.

2) Shows debut and shows die. The circle of life television. It changes the dynamics.

3) This board is a constantly changing entity and there is nothing that can be done to stop it. Doesn't mean we need to let it mutate from cancer and let it run away with uncontrolled growth, but I don't think anyone will be able to stop all growth, all change.

4) We live to vote to change it in ways we want it to change. It's not a fly trapped in amber. Slow moving molasses, maybe, but not amber.

I think that those folks who believe no change is good, need to accept the fact it's going to happen and that those who want to cut down the rainforest to build McMansions willy-nilly need to accept zoning laws and have a care for the environment.

This may only make sense to me. I don't know if it's helpful, but I needed to say it. I'm done blathering, now.

There might be time to watch and discuss tv if I didn't spend so much of it reading all these threads of spicy brained posts.

Yes your post makes sense, SailAweigh. And Cindy not only says what I feel, but says it so much better than I could.

I don't talk tv a lot because I don't watch it much. But I enjoy reading the posts that are far more enjoyable and interesting than the actual television show, for me. Natter and Bitches work for me, but they don't work for in-depth discussion of television. I don't have a personal stake in how and where television is discussed. I do care about the people that post on this board and hope that we can work out a way to structure our threads to accommodate our conversations most comfortably.

Can we please drop the supposition that anti-proliferation = anti-any-change-at-all-ever? Because it's not even remotely true, and it's one of the least helpful straw men out there.

There were major changes in culture when we moved in here, as there were when we moved from TT to WX. The biggest, I think, is that in both of our previous homes, we were one group of threads on a larger forum. The creation of one new Buffista thread was a much smaller deal when we were sharing space with fifteen squillion other subcommunities. Here, in our own sandbox, I think it behooves everyone for us to consider how each new thread will change the shape of our community on a deeper level than "I want a place to talk about CSI."

Some tv shows I only "watch" by reading Buffista comments. Like Dr. Who. I feel like I've seen the whole run, when I've only actually watched the first three episodes. For whatever that's worth.

I wasn't there for it, so can someone tell me why Bitches was spun out of Natter? Because for the longest time I couldn't tell the difference. Actually, still can't, except for who usually posts in which. Maybe they just merge for me because I post in both.

I think Bitches spun out of Buffy. It was in place by the time I delurked.

Once upon a time, it was quite a bit different from Natter. More, err. Naughty. Lots of sex talk and discussion, much of it centered around Spike, but not all. Heck, the fic thread spun out of it.