Utilizing Social Groups

[Hakeem]

Okay, so I'm about done with moderating the social groups.

I've added another rule for groups:

• Purpose:
  Groups must have a clear purpose. It should not be too broad nor too specific. Is there a forum for this already? Is your group better off as a thread? Does it make sense to have a group for it? Are you sure? Just checking. How about a poll? No? Well, okay.

Question: Is there, or would it be easy to implement a function that moves (most likely a conversion, technically, <.<) social group discussions to threads? There are a few social groups that don't serve a purpose as social groups, but are too awesome to delete. If it can't be done immediately, I can just put them in a "Threads" category until such time as it can be done with ease.

Now, as for what purpose they serve. After categorizing them, I found that a significant number of them were WC3 modding related, most of them being projects. I think this is a very good utilization of social groups. A project may start as a thread, move to a social group, and then if it grows big enough, can be upgraded to a full blown hosted project. The discussions would be converted to a forum, and the "social" group itself would be converted to a "real" User Group. (The album will just be lost I guess. Stupid vB. >_>)

Another use that I think has great potential, is the role playing category. Having groups for role play is an advantage over threads because it allows for a specific theme to grow in many directions. This could be a very useful mechanism for brainstorming. Maybe the process is: RPing in chat -> RP thread -> RP group -> project group -> hosted project. (-> site apart from THW, but that's not our business.)

I'm starting to see communities as a sort of tree. As the tree ages, it grows new twigs, twigs become branches, branches become boughs, boughs break off in strong winds and die root into the ground creating a new tree. Some parts grow faster than others. Some parts die. Some meld with the main trunk. It is all a great cycle. As leaders of a community, it is our job to prune our tree so that it stays healthy, and help the branches grow.

This lesson in zen has been brought to you by the natural flow of things. I just sorta wrote it.


Specific question: Are groups such as these too broad? If you do want to keep them, I would assume for identification purposes, should they have a specific category, "Specialties"? Should they be owned by staff members, or could we let them float around by transfers? And here's an idea that just came to me while writing: Perhaps we could use those group leader slots as a promotion medium. :O


But don't let me come up with all the ideas!

 

[Ralle]

Answer to the specific question. I think they copy functionality we already have. So I would prefer if they not there.

It would take some time to make the move to forum function and there would be so many things to keep track of. I don't feel like doing this.

 

[Hakeem]

Hehe, that's quite alright.


I now consider social groups sufficiently moderated and can keep up with moderating their daily activity.

 

[Ralle]

That sounds great.
What about categories?

 

[Hakeem]

I was just going to make categories as they are used. When enough groups in a category form a separate category, I'd split it.

 

[Squiggy]

Well in my opinion, social groups already attract too much attention.. most of the stuff discussed in them can easily be covered up using the forum, can't it?

But that's just me being picky - shortly said, I'd leave them as-is

 

[Rui]

Moving projects from threads to social groups is a good idea when we consider a thread takes too many pages. However, last time I checked, they had a character limit (per post/comment) and people couldn't comment on discussions without first requesting to be allowed to do so.
Your dichotomy theory is indeed the procedure we should apply for projects to grow, but social groups are not an option; the way they are structured is too bad. In spite of that, they could still prove to be an utilitarian tool for project teams.

 

[Pyritie]

Who moved this to SD? D:

 

[Duragon]

Probably Hakeem in an attempt to generate more discussion in a thread that previously wasn't getting much of it.

 

[Ralle]

To be honest I am not very fond of moving staff threads into public view in general. But I guess this particular thread is no problem.

 

[Kwah]

Social Groups are totally pointless in my view of things. First, they're almost never up-kept and any discussion dies down quickly. While this often leaves an entertaining legacy, doesn't actually add to the forums.

They're fine for perhaps hosted groups, or 'specialties' as Hakeem suggests up-top, but beyond that, no.

Another possibility is for something more like wc3c's pastebin, allowing private conversations between various invited members, rather than simply file-storage.

 

[Hakeem]

Who moved this to SD? D:

To be honest I am not very fond of moving staff threads into public view in general. But I guess this particular thread is no problem.

That's why I put the "[Site Discussion]" tag there.

Probably Hakeem in an attempt to generate more discussion in a thread that previously wasn't getting much of it.

While the reason wasn't that it wasn't getting enough discussion, it was curiously also not getting enough discussion. <.< >.>

 

[Devine]

Social groups don't live very long.
Thus, they are pretty much useless =/