sorry if you guys were waiting for me to chime in. That was a lot of reading!

It's true I have had difficulty starting up game-related chats in Other Media but I hadn't noticed it more than any other topic I might throw out in any other thread. Sometimes I get a discussion started, sometimes I wonder if everybody has me on ignore.

I don't think I've missed anyone else's game related talk in threads I frequent. Sometimes I want to comment but I can't seem to phrase it right. I might be sad a topic died out but have no confidence in my own ability to continue the conversation.

If there was a gamer thread I would post in it. I think that gamer talk belongs in Other Media because raise your hand if you want to talk about gaming and you're not already posting in Other Media. That said, I believe those who say Other Media is not friendly to game related chat.

On the other hand I wouldn't mind a food thread or even a wonderful-thing-my-kid-did-today thread for that matter so I do tend to side with the proliferationistas.

I think you've managed to ignore about five years and thousands of posts explaining why people feel the way they do about more threads, including one I made just minutes ago.

No, I haven't ignored anything. I just haven't said anything about how it all strikes me until now.

I would both vote for and post in a gaming thread. I'm running a D&D home game at the moment, play it in RPGA campaigns, play board games with Wallybee most nights, and host games nights on a fairly regular basis. And I would be willing to talk about it, should a thread be created.

Oh, and I'm not in Other Media. In answer to Laga's question.

See? See? Easy place to find billytea!

Also, what if gaming talk takes over the Other Media thread? Would we then get ejected to our own thread? Or no thread? Things like that have happened before, to bad results.

It... actually happened just recently, when Boxed Set got overwhelmed with Supernatural talk, and the latter was split off. And while I won't deny there were some hurt feelings in the middle there, it all worked out and I think everyone's happy now.

I guess, I'm just a little stumped: if there are any number of spaces where the discussion could take place, and it isn't happening there, then what grounds have we for creating a new space? Topics follow discussion, not the other way around. Get a bunch of gamers together, get them talking in Other Media, get them to overwhelm and annoy the usual denizens of Other Media, and then re-start this proposal.

Basically, my experience of thread creation has been that a thread created in advance of discussion has been wheel-spinny and nattery. Witness the entire first (WX) thread of Firefly, which was created at a time when any specific talk about Firefly was a spoiler. We sure didn't talk about Firefly! For 3000 posts! It was wasteful and pointless and led to some vaguely idiotic infighting.

Not repeating that experience is part of my reasoning for the whole "form follows function" anti-proliferation stance.

WX-FF was created when there wasn't anything to discuss. This proposal is people who feel that they have a lot to discuss, but don't feel they can do it in existing threads for a variety of reasons -- I think there's an important difference there.

I guess, I'm just a little stumped: if there are any number of spaces where the discussion could take place, and it isn't happening there, then what grounds have we for creating a new space?

For me, it's because it doesn't fit in the mandate of the narrower threads (I personally wouldn't have regarded it as even a possibility under the title of Other Media), and it would get overwhelmed in the broader threads. Not that I have a problem with repurposing a narrower thread to include it, but I would regard that as a change to existing conditions.

if there are any number of spaces where the discussion could take place, and it isn't happening there, then what grounds have we for creating a new space?

I think we've established at least one reason why gaming talk actually might not belong in Other Media, even if there are are reasons it might otherwise. Spoiler problems have been pretty widely recognized as a legitimate issue, though not universally.

Basically, my experience of thread creation has been that a thread created in advance of discussion has been wheel-spinny and nattery. Witness the entire first (WX) thread of Firefly, which was created at a time when any specific talk about Firefly was a spoiler. We sure didn't talk about Firefly! For 3000 posts! It was wasteful and pointless and led to some vaguely idiotic infighting.

This particular example is of such a wildly dissimilar situation as to seem irrelevant to me.

And I am now stumped: A fairly sizable group of posters has now stepped up to say "No, I haven't really been talking about gaming on the board, but now that the subject has come up, I'd talk about gaming a lot in a thread dedicated to the subject." Why is this not a valid method of thread creation?

This is what I don't understand about anti-proliferation. Why must discussion take over somewhere else before it is ejected into it's own room? Why, if a decent number of people want a thread, can we not just create it? Why do we have to become disruptive elsewhere first? Every other freakin' board on the internet allows individual user thread creation, but we're not even asking for that. I don't want us to become every other freakin' board on the internet, but COME ON. Why does this process have to be like pulling teeth Every. Time.

WTF?

What if a sizable number is less than forty two, but greater than twenty?

Now I'm getting upset, so I think I better walk away, but this is really ridiculous.

Every. Other. Board. On. The. Internet.

Can't we make this process just a little easier? Perhaps with less combativeness every time a proposal is made?

Because I like my teeth, and don't want them pulled?

Sorry, guy. We're at an intellectual impasse, and I think your position is as ridiculous and unreasonable as you think mine is. This is why compromise is good.

Spoiler problems have been pretty widely recognized as a legitimate issue, though not universally.

I... yeah. That's a whole separate issue, in some ways, but the way the board has rolled, for a long time now, makes a certain amount of spoilage inherent in the grouped-topic threads.