It’s perfect now, but it would be more perfect if there were a books and writers thread.
Those threads usually get pages of responses, and since new books come out all the time (and old ones come back in print or are rediscovered, and new folks join in), a permanent book thread seems like a natural.
If you want to see how that would work, OpalCat has one
**Oh, the Humanities!
Books/literature, music, film, tv, the arts in general…discuss! recommend! critique! **
I have long hoped for a forum dedicated to riddles, jokes, games and sports. Not so much because I’d want to visit very often, but because I want to get the dregs out of the forums I do visit.
tshirts - Right. I lurk over there at Opal’s board. That’s a nice forum, the Humanities.
They did a group read on Ulysses not too long ago. Ack! A bit out of my league, that one. I need to go back and see what everyone thought about it though. You reminded me. Thanks.
I must admit, MPSIMS2 was the first thing that came to mind. Put all the really fringe stuff there… and comparing IMHO to MPSIMS is like comparing the Straight Dope to, well, something really bad.
Lately, it seems like we could use a new forum just for Dopefest threads.
Or a whole forum devoted to people’s announcements of their leaving and coming back to the boards. How about a forum just for pleas for sympathy? Or one devoted to flirting? Or matchmaking threads? How 'bout “Homerland,” a forum exclusively for posting drunk?
I do like the idea of a Humanities forum. Also, I wonder if GQ could be split. It seems that threads fall off the first page awfully quick.
I’ve been thinking the same thing for awhile, Green Bean! MPSIMS turns over about every three hours, these days, and the pace is only going to pick up over time. Which means that if you don’t look over there at the right times, you can miss the thread about the Dopefest in your area for weeks.
Or we could (with consent of the admins, of course) move the Dopefest threads to ATMB, which has a slower turnover time. Dopefests are ‘about this board’, so why not?
Other than that, a Humanities forum (books, movies, plays, etc.) sounds great. The one at Fathom was a good idea, but I think it suffers from a shortage of posters. (In general, Fathom’s got too many fora for the number of active posters it currently has, but that’s another story. I’ve spoken up about that, over there, but mine seems to be a minority view.) This board is a much larger community, and I think a forum of this type would thrive here.
how 'bout a board (bored?) for simplistic whining (It’s too cold…I hate brussels sprouts… Please turn off your turn signal after 8 miles…). Oh wait, that’s the current manifestation of the Pit.
I’d be happy with either a riddles/jokes/sports forum or a Oh the humanities type arty forum where people could post short stories, links to artwork etc…
It seems that the problem with creating a new forum might just be the same as the problem with widening a highway: It might ease traffic in the short term, but it will soon fill to capacity again.
That said, I guess a new forum should be designed to siphon traffic from a forum that is already overcrowded, like MPSIMS or GQ. I think the addition of IMHO worked really well. But now MPSIMS seems almost as busy as ever. Of course, adding forums leads to big administrative difficulties.
I just took a quick look in MPSIMS, and it seems to me that quite a few of the threads there could probably be moved to IMHO–polling, etc. I guess that’s the problem with a. creating a new forum, and b. having forums that aren’t especially distinct. Just creates more work for the mods.
That said–I think that someone a while back suggested a forum called “the Watercooler.” I forget what the suggestion for the contents of that thread was, but it would be a great name for a forum.