Nutty, you yourself, during the SPN thing, expounded at length about how when fannish peeps talk about fannish things, non-fannish people's eyes glaze over, so fannish talk belongs in its own self-defined space.

Sean, I know you're in an emotional state right now, but this is an inaccurate representation of my position then as well as my position now. I was basically against a Supernatural thread, except inasmuch as a plurality of Bozed Set users were bothered by the Supernatural posts, and I didn't want to piss them off. Discussions about the cultural definition of media fandom, and where that resides on the board, were ancillary -- and I was anxious about media fandom being exiled from Boxed Set, not enthusiastic about its being given its own space. So basically, you've got my position backwards.

I have to say, it's incredibly frustrating to try to have an ordinary back-and-forth discussion when one of the party loses his temper. Sean, when you asked, "Why is this pulling teeth all the time?" you upped the temperature of this thread in a way that was totally unnecessary, and actively deleterious to reasonable discussion. Wanting something and convincing other people to want something are two different tasks. Your emotion is really failing to do the latter task right now.

Historically, hasn't any thread that's been proposed been created anyway?

I think most of them, although we did a bunch all at once, and created only some of those. (And never a General TV thread.) As many times as we've discussed the idea of a Politics thread, we've never actually voted it down; I just did that inside my head a whole bunch of times.

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

Please don't go there. I miss the Supernatural talk and the Supernatural talkers. How would you know if I did or not? Is there a poll I missed?

And as for the why it has to be so hard, because on both sides, people care passionately about the health of the community. So, yeah, if one, as I do, sees proliferation as generally harmful to the community, one will tend to argue against it.

Not because I hate gaming, or don't want people to talk about it, or whatever, but because I think that, ultimately, new threads, especially those that don't grow organically out of existing conversations, do more harm than good. It's not just that they suck potential conversations out of threads, it's that they seem to, and again, this is just my position/opinion encourage by their very nature small, insular groups who talk amongst themselves wherever they are.

I'm not wording this well. I'm tired. Only a three-cup day in coffee land, and nearing the end of it. But ultimately, it's that the more threads, the closer we get to Table Talk, where we're a platform for communities, rather than a community of our own. And who knows, maybe I'm locking the barn gate long, long after the horse is gone here.

you upped the temperature of this thread in a way that was totally unnecessary, and actively deleterious to reasonable discussion.

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. (emphasis mine)

I was not the one who unnecessarily raised the temperature of the thread.

I miss the Supernatural talk and the Supernatural talkers. How would you know if I did or not?

I did not know that! Have you expressed this sentiment before, and I just missed it? I was going primarily on the lack of complaints in Boxed Set, and the general tone of squee in Supernatural. (Compared to the complaints in the former, and the hurt feelings of Buffistas soon to subscribe to the latter, in the days/weeks before the split.)

I still miss Boxed Set and feel exiled there, if we're counting lingering reactions: as I tend to talk talk talk when passionate about stuff, to the point of being annoying, I skipped Boxed Set entirely during my SCC binge. (And then I got busy, and have still not caught up.)

Well, Sean, if you took the quoted lines as insulting and inflammatory, I'm sorry, because they were not intended that way. However, that's not a very good reason to become intentionally nasty in response.

Passionate argument is only persuasive inasmuch as the passion serves the argument.

I still miss Boxed Set and feel exiled there

I still miss you -- all of you -- in Boxed Set. It feels like there's a huge chunk of the board that went off to form their own board (and I'm deliberately leaving aside any talk of how that happened; I don't want to revisit it in this discussion because, again, it's a very different case in my mind). It's a giant fucking hole, even if the talk of a show I don't watch was sometimes a lot for me to skip-n-skim.

But I do like this one, because it's a convo I've been wanting to have, specifically with Buffistas -- OMG HAVE YOU SEEN OTHER GAME BOARDS?! I spend a lot of hours playing games, and thinking games, and reading game blogs, and I can't have that talk with the people I love.

All of which is to say: this isn't proliferationista or anti-proliferationista for me. It's about the specific discussions that are or aren't happening.

But I do like this one, because it's a convo I've been wanting to have, specifically with Buffistas -- OMG HAVE YOU SEEN OTHER GAME BOARDS?! I spend a lot of hours playing games, and thinking games, and reading game blogs, and I can't have that talk with the people I love.

I've seen one really cool one that is fairly heavily modded that a friend of mine frequents. Darned if I can remember the name, though.

Okay, well. I don't feel I was ever intentionally nasty. I also feel I've been making quite a concerted effort since to bring my discussion down to a rational level, and have been called emotional for my troubles. In fact, it feels to me that you've been deliberately trying to ratchet things up, too, but whatevs. Clearly I'm the only one being unreasonable here.

I don't feel I have been ad hominem, or outright ranty. I'm a little surprised that I've been taken that way, though I certainly acknowledge I was being melodramatic, primarily for effect.