on the phone and standing on the bus, but what I am saying is not that fragmentaion isn't there, but that my experience has been that narrow topic threads FOR ME are less cure than cause.

before you'll believe me that there are already fragmented subcultures to the board?

When have I ever denied this?

My position is there isn't a clean break from subcultures/no subcultures. There's a lot of gray area, and I'd like to keep us as un-fragmented as possible for as long as we can because that is how we will best preserve what I view as our core Buffista community culture. Hence the slippery slope arguments and the concerns for precedent-setting.

I feel like you're saying "Well we already have some subcultures so your argument is a moot point therefore gimme my thread." And I don't think it's that clear-cut.

Steph, it is, in fact, #2.

Dang! Again.

I swear to you, from my reading of this thread over the past few days (and I've read every post [except for the ones where you, ND, and billytea tangented off into gaming]), I don't think that anyone is doing that. I really don't.

I swear to you, from my reading of this thread over the past few days (and I've read every post [except for the ones where you, ND, and billytea tangented off into gaming]), I don't think that anyone is doing that. I really don't.

Me neither, FWIW. Except I did read the gaming posts.

I support the gaming thread because, while there are about a billion places on the internets where I could go to talk gaming, this is the only place to talk gaming with Buffistas.

That brings me closer to the community here (chicken), because I already like the community here (egg).

But I get that that is just me. I wasn't happy to see the creation of Minearverse, because I wasn't in a place where I could watch his shows real time (if not for years). So I couldn't go in there (spoilers), but several people I like reading spent more and more time in there, and less in threads where I was.

No real point, just giving a specific selfish example. Everybody has their own situation, that's what makes us a community, not brain-sharing clones.

b.org, not Borg.

I wasn't happy to see the creation of Minearverse, because I wasn't in a place where I could watch his shows real time (if not for years). So I couldn't go in there (spoilers), but several people I like reading spent more and more time in there, and less in threads where I was.

This happened with me and the Music thread, and also with Comedy and Procedurals. The conversations I was having in Natter and the people I was having them with are now simply missing from my board experience.

Games have spoilers? Who knew? (so without knowledge of this world)

Jumping in to say that I thought spoilers only came up in the discussion in response to the idea of putting gaming talk in Other Media.

As to the other question, I think part of the problem with these votes (from what I've seen, and from a vantage point close to Anne's as regards adding threads) is that the discussion never seems to be simply 1) "I want a new thread; 2) "I don't want to add threads".

It often reads to me as 1) "I want a new thread, why do we have to have this drawn out process to create something I really want?"; 2) "I don't want to add any threads, why do we have to keep talking about this?" Maybe that's not how people really feel but that's how it comes across to me. If either or both sides do feel this way, it would seem we should revisit the process (as some have proposed) rather than continuing to criticize it.

The thing is, say Wonderfalls and such conversation had been moved to Natter - you'd then get spoiled reading Natter.

The only reason I support a gaming topic here is because I didn't know we had Buffistas gamers. I'd like to talk to them about gaming - Buffistas are shiny. I could just go and join a gaming forum elsewhere, but, well... Don't wanna. They'll write in caps and say LOLOMGWTFBBQ.

This happened with me and the Music thread

And yet, if there were no music thread and that conversation were happening in Natter, I'd be unable to participate. There are many different, equally valid ways of experiencing this community. And so we have our procedures and go with what the majority decide. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best we could come up with.

There are many different, equally valid ways of experiencing this community. And so we have our procedures and go with what the majority decide. It's not a perfect system, but it's the best we could come up with.

Yep, this.