New group for new features?

I'm thinking it might make sense for me to have a group just for feature announcements. Things like this.

We're cranking up the pace of development, and not everything is blog worthy. I also feel odd putting new feature announcments in "Recommended Site Improvements."

That's the argument in favor. The argument against is that it would be more "unidirectional" than other groups. We would discourage people from posting to it, unless they actually had a new feature to announce (like a Firefox Plug-in, etc.) We'd announce stuff and then talk about them in the usual, freewheeling way, but it would be a push-and-discuss model.

Feelings?

Sounds excellant to me. Somethign along those lines has been asked for by quite a few people. And we wouldn't need to keep stalking you.

Make sure it's a default group for everybody? But a big banner discouraging posting?
When you want to discuss a feature would that still go in the new group, or to site talk?

New features would go in it. Discussing old features or proposed features would continue to go in Recommended Site Improvements. I don't know about Site talk. I'm not that happy with it. It feels unfocused, in part because you can't belong to it.

I went ahead and did it. (Here it is.) If it doesn't work, I'll kill it.

that works, let it live.

I presume we can still post to it, to discuss these new features though?

I really like it, it will hopefully make it a lot easier to track new features and give input on them.

Heather

As may be obvious from things I've posted elsewhere, I think this is a great idea.

Well I'd rather wait for the wiki to come along than have to track another group.

I really like it. I don't think it ends the need for stalking since you'll probably still make important comments elsewhere, but it will definitely be helpful.

Well I'd rather wait for the wiki to come along than have to track another group.

What's wrong with having to track another group?

This is great, thank you!

> 10

What's wrong with having to track another group?

Well, I have to say that the number of groups announcing/discussing/denouncing suggested and implemented features is getting a bit ridiculous.

I noticed the other day that there were two "Stalking Tim" groups. Why?

I think the two Stalking Tim groups were created at the same time, and one was immediately abandoned.

But the high (perhaps even ridiculously so) number of groups doesn't explain what's wrong with it. All the posts appear in Talk no matter what group they're from, so what harm is done by having multiple groups?

> 13
Oh, man, I wrote an answer and it disappeared!

Trying again.

so what harm is done by having multiple groups?

I'm not saying that there is harm. It's just that it's time-consuming to have to check out several different groups for information and discussion that would more logically fit into one or two.

I've gotten in the habit of copying my posts every time before pressing submit, even if they're only a sentence or two long.

It makes sense that it would be time-consuming to check each group individually. I didn't consider that because I usually look at My Groups in Talk, so it's all the same to me.

What I think would be more useful than restricting the number of groups, though, is letting us create our own subsets of groups to view in Talk. My Groups doesn't really allow enough flexibility; just because I want to mark a group for future reference doesn't mean I need to read its every message (for example, there was a group for listing bookstores in various cities--I would have liked to add that to my watch list for future reference, but didn't because I wasn't interested in most of the discussion).

Obviously I'm for this, as I suggested it again just yesterday. :-)

I doubt that most people will read or pay much attention to the group description, so I predict that there will be a lot of discussion and new topics showing up. Unless there's a way to make it a "read only" group to which only LT staff can post . . . .

(Aside: I thought that the other "stalking" group was deleted by the founder at the time. Do deleted groups "hang around," like deleted books, and authors with no books?)

15 _Zoe_

I like that idea very much. There are a number of groups that I would like to dip into occasionally but don't necessarily want on my Your Groups page (and anyone who suggests using bookmarks has rather missed the point).

14, 16 > apparently both stalking groups come up in search, however if you click on the first one it tells you it's deleted. Why does it still show up?

#18

Maybe Tim hates to throw anything out, and LT has no attic? :-)

Great :-) thanks Tim, this will help a lot.

>19 myshelves:

I do hate to throw anything out.

#21

Disposophobia? Fan of the Collyer brothers? :-)

Btw, touchstones have finally gone completely insane. I was going to mention a book about the Collyers, but the first 3 choices had NO word in common with the title, the 4th was the wrong book, and that was all I got.

'Well I'd rather wait for the wiki to come along than have to track another group'

I'd like the Wiki to be integrated with Talk - like the Wikipedia watchlist - so that I don't have to check the Wiki as well as 'Talk'.

>22 myshelves:

Can you be more specific? What is the touchstone you were using?

>23 8664:

We'll have to have a big conversation about what the wiki is used for.

#24
Touchstones:

The book about the Collyers is: My Brother's Keeper by Davenport.

1st touchstone that comes up is Enterprise by Michael Jan Friedman.

2nd is Constitution by Michael Jan Friedman.

3rd is Republic by Michael Jan Friedman.

All 3 of those are Star Trek books, and if you check the work page you find that some copies show stuff like "(Star Trek: My Brother's Keeper, Book 3)" after the title.

The 4th --- and last --- choice is My Brothers Keeper (Powermark Comics) by Steve Benintendi. There is 1 copy listed. The Davenport book has 18 listed. But the latter doesn't even come up on a work search. (sigh)

Yeah. This is about the apostrophe. I know Casey had some issues with that. I'll forward this.

Apostrophe catastrophe ended. It should work right now.

Bravo! 32 choices now, and the first ones are the exact title. Well done.

We would discourage people from posting to it, unless they actually had a new feature to announce (like a Firefox Plug-in, etc.)

What about features that you've announced elsewhere? For example, could someone else post what you said in the blog about subsorting?