Folks, I am blown away by all these great ideas.
And let me explain a little better than I did late-late last night about the question of opening up new threads to all.
In addition to needing more mods, we're wary of organizational issues. It could be very easy for this place to suddenly be a huge mess of a hundred threads where it's hard to find anything, etc. (Believe me, when you grow really suddenly, you find problems you never dreamed of.)
We know the main discussion has gotten way too gigantic for anyone new to take on, or even for most regulars to keep up with. We want to expand the threads and give you the chance to have more focused conversation.
We just don't think it's wise to lurch from a handful of threads to possibly a hundred or more overnight. So we want to start taking your ideas and creating more threads a handful at a time, organizing as we go, and playing it by ear as we expand--seeing what kind of feedback we get, what people like/dislike about it, adapt as we go.
Soon the boards will take on a life of their own--as they are already beginning to--and we will step back more and more, and let it just create itself, with all of us here as part of the creation.
We just want to take a little care in getting ourselves there, especially in these very early days.
All input is welcome. Feel free to toss out ideas for organizing things here as well. (eg, I really liked gnash's idea in post #16 "how about a mega MOVIE SCENE DISCUSSION forum, with breakdowns of scene in chronological order?" i bet a lot of people would love to get into that nitty gritty. some people will hate it, but some will love it. the problem is we could have dozens of threads, and that could make a huge mess of the boards. but gnash was right on the money of suggesting we create a section to bundle them together, so people could find them easily, without all of them cluttering up everything else. including that was really helpful.
(i know, it may sound obvious in hindsight. but organization is going to be key as we expand.) i have been to lots of other boards through the years, and the ability to find things easily--and to stumble into likely threads of interest while you're on your way--are crucial.