Groups: Long Term concerns and solutions?

[Dr_Faustus]

Hello all,

I am sure that this is by no means the first time this has been mentioned nor would it be the last time its brought up. That said I wanted to discuss the Long Term concerns of user created groups, sustainability, and possible solutions. Anyone that looks over onto the groups will know that there are a great number of them now, and while that number is indeed great only a fraction of them see any activity after the first few weeks/months of creation before going quiet. You will have groups that are open and wide to discussions that most people can find reason to jump in and chat about and groups so niche in design that they may simply exist to serve the creator's very limited and temporary purpose before being forgotten to the passage of time. I feel that the quality of groups and purposes behind them should have more defined rules/purpose beyond limited in scope purposes that may not benefit the wider end use of the community at heart. While I am not going to use any good or bad examples here as I want to remain neutral on this (even I will admit to my own created communities being not as active as I would like, and the thought of creating another one lingers on the mind but I might consider deleting one of the 2 non active ones to not clog up the community). But this also brings up the thought of solutions.

In the thought process of Group creation should there be a hard limit on how many groups a user can make? Should we consider a board of approval to make sure the group in question actually has a worthy quality of discussion and is not some insanely niche or low quality group? Should we consider timed purgings if a group is not active after so many months/year? I am sure there are solutions that can be made here that can increase the quality of the groups in the community without increasing the number of them to a mind-numbing level. Again I am not pointing fingers or making examples of what should/should not be good/bad quality groups here, I am mainly looking at the long term as the situation could get more varied and clustered before things become too large to navigate through.

Anyways, its just a thought that has been lingering on my mind for a bit now. I am sure the staff has a few ideas about this already as I know I would not be the only one noticing these things here. Don't take it as an attack on groups as a concept or a personal attack on any groups in general please. Its just a thought about long term quality control for the community. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk.

 

[Alexander1970]

Greeings.

It´s not only about Groups / Creation / Then the complete standstill after a short time....
I call it 2 week illness.. The whole Society is built on it... Take a look around the world... The 2 week sickness is applied everywhere..
It has probably never been as "forgetful" as people are today in the history of mankind...
What could be the cause of it....hmmm.....I just can't figure it out..............

Wish you all a very,very,very nice Day...and......do not forget.......

 

[The Catboy]

My biggest concern is the limited tools group mods have. We can't boot people from groups, we can only delete their comments and threads. If you have someone in the group causing trouble, it requires escalating it to site staff.

 

[Lv44ES_Burner]

Here's my question, and I guess my whole take on this: Does a message board really need anything social networking-like, like groups, when the meat and potatoes of why we're here is the board and forum threads to discuss the content we're here to discuss? I honestly don't think so, because groups to me take away from the primary message space where we discuss things in an open environment and can be abused to create echo chambers, places where mob mentality can build up and linger and fester.

 

[Sono]

Here's my question, and I guess my whole take on this: Does a message board really need anything social networking-like, like groups, when the meat and potatoes of why we're here is the board and forum threads to discuss the content we're here to discuss? I honestly don't think so, because groups to me take away from the primary message space where we discuss things in an open environment and can be abused to create echo chambers, places where mob mentality can build up and linger and fester.

Fair enough.

I wanted to bring up personal blogs as a counter-case, but the more cases I tried to bring up, the more I felt like I was making a clown of myself, so I have completely scrapped that, and decided to fully agree instead of just partially.

Although I still do have a counter-argument though, and that is then the problem of mixing the author's blog with personal stuff, when they "want a different audience" for their groups vs. their personal stuff.

As for the main message board, there are some genuine cases where you would really not want to "pollute" it with some things, although now all of the sudden I can't bring up any examples, but I still do stand my case on this regardless of this.

 

[Dr_Faustus]

Here's my question, and I guess my whole take on this: Does a message board really need anything social networking-like, like groups, when the meat and potatoes of why we're here is the board and forum threads to discuss the content we're here to discuss? I honestly don't think so, because groups to me take away from the primary message space where we discuss things in an open environment and can be abused to create echo chambers, places where mob mentality can build up and linger and fester.

While there are some truths here to this I feel the general idea of groups has always been about expanding discussion in areas where otherwise it would be limited or could end up flooding a main channel. For example one of the more popular groups (the Steam Deck group) would probably fit in the Computer Technology & Gaming board but the discussions of the Deck in general made there could potentially flood out any other discussion there which could cause some issues with the community at heart. It was why the idea at the early stages to include a separate Deck board but that might also open the door to any portable PC gaming devices as well, and thus the concept gets more muddy after that. A group allows to contain and expand the discussions on the topic while not having much flood over into other boards. That in concept and in function is beneficial to everyone.

The issue I have is that there really is no defined quality control for what the boards should be aiming towards content wise. I mean I could make a group about a game series or about a form of appreciation group for something related to the community in one aspect or another, or I could make a very niche community about say, my weekend trip finds at the local goodwill and if anyone else goes goodwill/thrift hunting. Its a very niche concept that might appeal to me or very, very few other people but really does not have a good general quality of discussion that would warrant its own group or hell, let alone a discussion thread.

As for echo chambers or mob mentality, I have not seen either of these take form in any way yet as far as I know. I know you are referencing FB groups from your abstraction of concept here and while that could become a worry in itself I would hope that once again, a quality standard would come into effect to prevent such groups from being made. I don't think any of us wants to see these come into existence, as the political board in itself can be a bit of an echo chamber in itself at times.

I wanted to bring up personal blogs as a counter-case, but the more cases I tried to bring up, the more I felt like I was making a clown of myself, so I have completely scrapped that, and decided to fully agree instead of just partially.

Although I still do have a counter-argument though, and that is then the problem of mixing the author's blog with personal stuff, when they "want a different audience" for their groups vs. their personal stuff.

I also feel that part of the problem with groups in itself is sometimes it could come off as very "blog-ish" either intentionally or not. Examples being groups based around certain people or in the extent of not being intentional groups that you create to discuss and (hope) to have multiple people chime in with their threads and discussions/content but instead seem to only be active when you the creator post something, which feels like its intentionally putting you on the spot to keep generating content for discussion otherwise the group goes into hibernation. Its hard to be the only one making content to discuss and in result feels like a blog than a group.