CALLING ALL PEOPLE THAT CREATED GROUPS HERE, ON NING

[Alla]

Today we have 200 groups. Great! Very creative people. I love it. I looked at some of the groups and I noticed that not all of them are set to their fullest capacity. The left column, the widest – is a ‘Discussion Forum’. It has 3 items. The last one – ‘Show’ has maximum of 20. It means that 20 discussions can be displayed at the same time on the page. I think it is very important to display as many discussions as possible. If people do not see a discussion, chances are they are not going to click on ‘View All’ button at the bottom of the ‘Discussion Forum’ and a discussion is going to be left unanswered by a person.

‘Admin functions’ include options:

Edit Group

Delete Group

Send message to the group

Follow/Stop Following

All those above features are self-explanatory. Ask questions if you have them.

Manage Group members – this option has interesting features we did not have on old TBD. The group creator can promote a member to Group Administrator. The level of control is similar to the level of control to the Group Creator.
You can ban a member of the group. This option brings me to a question. Why would you ban a member of the group and how do you see this happen?

We all know that we have the best intentions in mind. Do we always get the best treatment? No, not at all. Do we always deserve to be treated poorly? No, of course not. So, what do we do? Kat is most likely not going to watch out for us, although I do not really know for sure. I think that group creator and/or group administrator have to take care of the problems. People come to TBD at different time of their lives and rather often they are hurt deeply and they try to unload their problems on people that are trying to help them. Sounds familiar?

I created ‘Loyal TBDers’. That’s how I felt when we heard the bad news. I hope that we do not have people that disturb peaceful life of ‘Loyal TBDers’ and other groups. But if push comes to shove, this is what I will do or the Group Administrator will do: if we get ‘bad sheep’ we will talk to the person and try to resolve the issue. If we have irreconcilable differences, this person has to be banned from the group. What do you think? Let’s hear opinions.

[Bull]

I don't know if two hundred groups is great. Are we becoming too fragmented. The more groups the more difficult it is to follow discussions in my opinion. There are currently 218 groups for 2053 members. An average of less than 10 members per group.
I am not saying we pick which one are allowed. I am just hoping that some who started groups might think hard about keeping them up. Also there might be some room to consolidate others.
I just think the simpler, and the more posts we can get in the forum section the more user friendly this site becomes.

[SeaRain]

There were a gazillion groups on the other TBD. Many of them were unused. A lot of groups start because someone has an idea for a topic and starts a group about hangnails or whatever. Now we can do that in the forum instead of groups.

But I agree, after a while if no one joins a group someone made, someone needs to look at that group's topic and see if that group should be mixed with another group.

Do you know where someone is? I saw him around but he is gone now.

[Alla]

Groups are going to be where they are and visible in the 'Groups' category. Discussions in the forum are accumulated sequentially. Right now we have 107 discussions. That is 11 pages. After a while it's going to be difficult to get to a certain discussion. I am not saying impossible, but difficult.

[Alla]

We can have groups by invitation. At the time when you are creating the group, you will have to click on 'Moderated Membership'. About scammers: block them. About banning from site: that would be done on Robin's level, most likely.

[Angharad]

Thanks for this, Alla!

I created the haiku group and, I admit, I had missed the "Show" function. It is of great help in my group because the comments on the home page had begun to obscure the specific discussion topics (the default display had been 3 discussions).

Now it is clear where the real "work" is being done....

[Alla]

No problem.

[Alla]

Exactly, Albert. This website has good moderation tools. It is different then on old TBD, but we have it. A lot of features are not discussed yet. I think we will as we go. You did the right thing and people will understand it, because you are protecting them. That's how I feel.