Failed groups

I want to branch off this discussion from the main one about admins. Are there are lot of failed groups on LT? What does "failed" mean? Can these groups be revived?

Looking at my list of groups, I'm not sure there are many that I'd consider failed. There are plenty of inactive ones, but I wouldn't necessarily consider them dead, nor do I think it's automatically a problem for a group to be quiet.

My inactive groups generally seem to belong to niche areas, or ones that don't have much to do with LT: Egyptian Fiction (very small area), Sweet Valley (small area and one that I'm not even very interested in discussing, but that remains on the list because those books were important to me in the past), Mathematics (just not a huge discussion topic among bookworms), Lingua Latina (again, a pretty small interest area), History of Science/Technology/Medicine....

It seems like these groups are inactive because people just don't have that much to say about those areas.

What are some examples of groups that you'd expect to succeed, but that mysteriously failed?

I had expected the Pagan and occult groups to be more active but no one seems to have much to say in them. I have no idea why.

I belong to a number of groups where all the messages are dormant. Some of them I started and I'm really not a great admin. Most of the others the admin abandoned long ago.

I've also searched for groups that looked interesting and found all the messages dormant. With my poor record of admining groups, I haven't tried to revive them.

Most of the groups I've seen fail it's because there aren't a critical mass of members to have a conversation with. With people coming and going on LT and having more or less time for forums, I think you need a minimum of 50 to 100 people to make a group work (unless a bunch of folks who post at least once a week join)

I wish the Sustainability one was more active.
http://www.librarything.com/groups/sustainability#forums

(tries to resist the obvious joke)

(so hard)

tries to resist the obvious joke

Oh. Now what would that be exactly? :) :)

add: (OK - now I'm *cackling*)
A LOT!

(I'm in that Sweet Valley group. I was sad to see that it's so... ignored.)

I agree with aulsmith, smaller groups seem to "fail" or go dormant more often because there just aren't enough people to keep conversations going. People often drift in and out of groups (I know I sometimes go a month or two without checking some of "my" groups), so if there aren't many people to being with, the drifting is really the end of the group.

>>2 PhaedraB: I try with Bookshelf of the Damned. ): (Which is actually not as dead as it could be.)

But, yeah, it surprises me too, that there isn't at least one active occult group, even if it isn't mine. Possibly because there are too many semi-dormant ones, all with slightly different slants.

I was also recently surprised to find that the only trans/genderqueer focused group on LT is long dormant.

Also there's a bunch of "reading challenge" type communities that aren't time-limit based - that could be kept up as an ongoing challenge - but went dormant early on anyway.

Is it bad to have non-active groups? Without defining inactive, I would say that its bad to clutter up search results with inactive groups. But Tim already hides dormant groups behind a (more) link in the search results.

It might be unfortunate if a great name for a topic was taken by a dead group. I would guess in that case if someone wanted to revive it and the creator were unavailable that Tim could replace the creator.

Are there cases where there are more specialized groups than a topic can support and it would benefit those groups to merge all or some of them? Didn't Tim go through a process of merging groups a while ago? I can't remember if he actually merged any though.

But is merging really needed anyway? Someone could just start a new more general group and invite the participants in the more specialized groups to participate.

So, I'm still not sure that the large number of dead groups, with or without an active creator, is a problem.

Oops, I got to the other thread before I noticed this one in my morning read-through.

Please take this post as being in this thread.

Moar coffee!

Just a thought. When I joined I searched for a group that might include people who do bead or wire work. None. I thought I might try to start one and did a search people who have these types of books. I didn't find many. I quickly came to the conclusion that it wouldn't be a very active community here.

I then looked up self-sufficiency or sustainability groups and found some that had few members and most were dormant. That would turn me off of starting a new group along the same lines, knowing those ones didn't work out. That might be a small problem?

I don't want to lead/admin a group though. But I guess there is nothing to stop me from posting to them and maybe find a renewed interest in it.

11> That would turn me off of starting a new group along the same lines, knowing those ones didn't work out. That might be a small problem?

Sure, of course. I think that's the key problem, which is unfixable by any code no matter how clever. LT is a specialized site that attracts a subset of internet users. A further subset of that uses Talk rather than just the cataloging features. So now you get to a further subset of anyone with a particular interest. It just narrows things down so much that it's no wonder that Active Groups list so quickly peters out.

It used to be that even groups which didn't generate Talk were useful, because you could gain useful information from the Group Zeitgeist. Since that feature is no longer active, essentially it's a Like button for a topic, and you can still find people/libraries with common interests by browsing groups. Thus, while the groups aren't wholly successful, I'm not sure even dormant groups can be called complete failures. (I do browse groups, but I concede I may be one of few who do.)

Yeah, I think that's the main issue with dormant or near-dormant groups: people who want to join a group like that will find them, and conclude that there's no interest in their topic. When there might actually be, if someone just put some work in to get the community talking.

Which is where Tim's strategy of giving more of a sense on "ownership" to admins comes in - if there's a person who feels like they have a responsibility for a group, they might be more motivated to do things - like starting discussion topics, or making a special effort to reply to posts, or promoting the group elsewhere - which can slip a group from near-dead to active. Even if they don't have special powers, having the sense of particular ownership tends to make people more willing to do that sort of thing. (It's a variation on the bystander effect - if all 200 group members are equally responsible, everybody assumes that if it was important, somebody else would do it. Give one of them an orange safety belt, though, and suddenly things start happening.)

I while ago I looked through groups to find ones that I might be interested in but I haven't done that since. There might have been groups that have started that I'd want to join but I wouldn't know unless they advertised in one of the groups I did join.

Would it make sense to allow you to register some keywords for groups that you'd be interested in and having LT give you a profile comment if someone created a group that matched?

14> Which is where Tim's strategy of giving more of a sense on "ownership" to admins comes in - if there's a person who feels like they have a responsibility for a group, they might be more motivated to do things

But don't creators already have a sense of ownership? It seems like the only thing an admin could do that a creator couldn't do is create more admins, which seems more likely to decrease the sense of ownership than to increase it.

Why not look at ways to give all members a greater sense ownership of their groups? Consider what behaviour is desirable, and add little incentives to encourage it.

For example, do we want people reviving dormant groups? Make a helper badge for starting threads in dormant groups that generate replies from at least 5 users. And so on.

I'd still like to see member-awarded badges too, which are better for intangible social things like thanking that person who takes the time to personally welcome everyone to a group, but I know everyone is vehemently opposed to that.

> 16 Speaking as a creator of a couple of communities, not really? Not to the extent that I do on other sites where I have an "admin" or "maintainer" or "mod" title for communities I started. It hasn't really been clear to what extent a group creator *is* meant to be owner, anyway, which left me hesitant to do things like start discussion threads, promote, etc.

And that's me, who's relatively active on LT & was around when Talk was created; I imagine there are plenty of people who aren't really sure whether they have a role.

(And given some of the arguments on this thread, clearly there are participants who *don't* think they should have any such thing...)

>>17 _Zoe_:: Giving everybody a greater sense of ownership is great, and I love the idea of some kind of incentive to get people doing social things (assuming that is a goal, and we want LT to move farther in the social-networking direction) but it doesn't solve the "bystander effect" problem, ...which is basically to say that in general I am all for egalitarianism, but I do think that to do some things, humans just need leaders.

(This is coming from the perspective of having been part of a movement to increase community activity on dreamwidth.org, and having done a lot of experimenting and workshopping to figure out what works and what doesn't. And the one thing that most reliably does is to have one or a small group of people who act as leaders and push for activity -- once activity reaches a certain level, it's a self-sustaining reaction and the leaders can step back, but in the beginning you need the leaders.)

which left me hesitant to do things like start discussion threads, promote, etc.

Maybe this should be clarified somehow. I think it's always appropriate to start discussion threads, regardless of who created the group. And I think it's also reasonable to send out invitations to people who seem like they would be interested in the group; this is something that's actually even better when done by someone other than the creator.

I can certainly see the value of having a small group of people acting as leaders and pushing for activity--my question is just whether it's really necessary for them to act in an "official" capacity. I've seen great things done entirely unofficially (the TIOLI Challenge within the 75 Book Challenge group especially stands out), and I'd like to see more effort put into that approach before deciding that official admins are needed. What is it that motivates individuals to step forward and take on a leadership role in a group? Is it really a prerequisite for the "leaders" to have special powers that other people don't?

If it's just the title I think Creator is much more empowering than Administrator. But I'm guessing its more than the title. What did being an admin on those other communities let you do that made you feel empowered?

>>20 jjwilson61:: Creator just says you made something, it doesn't imply any long-term active relationship.

As for the extra powers I have on those other sites: Nothing!

Or, well, it varied - some of them give me mod powers allowing deletion/editing, some let me control membership (which LT already does for private groups), some let me alter the group's pages or profiles (which again, LT already does), some gave me a shiny star or special icon. But having a title & job description that made the role clear, both for me and the membership, and having the ability to share it or pass it on, gave me the confidence to take on other leadership roles that didn't require extra powers.

I think the problem is that some people just operate differently in social situations. There are people who will be comfortable stepping forward and taking on a leadership role, whether there's any 'official' capacity or not, and I say hooray for them. :)

But not everybody does feel comfortable doing that, and there are a lot of people who are a lot more comfortable, or a lot more motivated, with some sort of script or 'official' approval or appointment. If the goal is to get more people doing that kind of thing, then drawing in the people who need that extra motivation seems like it's worth it.

Edit to add: Also, I should note that having official community "leaders" is useful to the membership, too. If there are problems, questions, things that need mediated, etc., it gives the membership somebody to go to who will have responsibility to take care of it (even if 'taking care of it' consists of no special powers, just talking to the members from a position of acknowledged authority.) For example, if a member is unsure whether a certain thread is appropriate for a group, and wants to make sure before they possibly annoy the rest of the membership, they will message the admin and ask; with no designated leader, the only option is to guess, or to start a thread polling the group, at which point you've introduced the possibly-inappropriate topic anyway.

That sort of thing requires no special techno powers, but it does require being someone the entire group, including newcomers, acknowledges as leader.

4>

I wonder whether the "Join to post" groups like that one are more likely to fail? The additional hurdle probably deters a lot of people from casual participation -- seeing a thread that interests them, commenting, and then following the group more regularly

But having a title & job description that made the role clear, both for me and the membership, and having the ability to share it or pass it on, gave me the confidence to take on other leadership roles that didn't require extra powers.

Would it be possible to create a "job description" for the position of group member? "As a member of this group, you're encouraged to start threads, welcome new members, answer questions about the group, invite people to join, and generally participate as much as possible." Or something along those lines.

there are a lot of people who are a lot more comfortable, or a lot more motivated, with some sort of script or 'official' approval or appointment. If the goal is to get more people doing that kind of thing, then drawing in the people who need that extra motivation seems like it's worth it.

The problem is that while trying to draw in one group of people, you may be driving out the other. I'm currently happy to start threads in any group, invite people to join, and generally take an active role. But if there were suddenly a list of the five people who were "in charge" of the group, I would feel that I wasn't necessarily welcome to do those things anymore. So I'm not convinced that some people should be given extra motivation at the expense of everyone else.

I wonder whether the "Join to post" groups like that one are more likely to fail?

Oh, absolutely. I hate join-to-post groups. There have been times when I considered saying something in Science Fiction Fans, for example, but couldn't be bothered to join the group and then leave again. It's an artificial hurdle that wouldn't keep out anyone who really intended to do harm, but that does discourage casual participation.

Some groups expire. I started a 2009 reading group that served its purpose. There's no way it should revive. I'd mark it expired if that was an option.

>25 VisibleGhost: That's true. I'd still like a way to access expired groups, though.

Some threads in some groups just aren't worth keeping though. If Tim is really wanting to cut down on storage requirements, I humbly re-offer this concept of marking threads, or possibly entire groups as "ephemeral".

The concept of a "use-by" date or a "time to live" period might be useful here as well.

I really want Tim to clarify what it means for old groups to be a problem. I don't think storage space is the big issue, especially since many of the "dead" groups hardly have any posts anyway.

26- Access as in post to? Or access as in read? Both?

I think some groups could go into an archive read-only area. Storage is pretty cheap these days. Keeping them out of the current programming loops would probably cut down on server load.

>29 VisibleGhost: Sorry, I meant read.

>12 brightcopy:

More on critical mass and the number of people talking on LT: almost always when I am online I see about 200-250 members online at that time. I'm pretty sure many of those reading my post could list at least 50-75 of those off the top of our heads, since they're (we're) the "often on" members. A member of the Green Dragon or Le Salon could probably list quite a few more. But its mostly the same people. Before deciding if individual groups are "failures," maybe the larger question should be asked: why are so few people on Talk? In other words, why is Talk as a whole a relative failure?

What groups have succeeded? Three of the most popular groups are in fact about the one thing we all have in common, LT itself. We also have a Tavern, a Salon, and a Train that serve a broad group of LT members and are off-topic as much or more than "on." Challenge and game groups do well. Even if you look beyond the top 20, topical groups are less active than "social" communities. Since there are few active Talkers, it makes no sense to splinter into a hundred or a thousand small rooms for intimate conversation on specific topics. Increase the draw of Talk as a whole, and the critical mass will be there for niche communities.

Would I be interested in talking about the topic of cognitive science, a focus for one group I'm in? In this case, yes, despite the fact that I'm not overall particularly social, and the group has 105 members. But of the 30 most recent who are displayed, none of them are on the "always on Talk" list as I recognize them. What if there were conversational prompts? For instance, what if groups could be set up with feeds that show recently added books with certain related tags or LC subject headings (essentially group Tag Watch). This might be computationally demanding, and there would still be no guarantee anyone would visit the page, since even active members don't always visit Group pages.

I do think that encouraging more active Groups would be good for the site as a whole. Letting more people edit group descriptions and pictures is good, I think. But other duties can become burdens for the right people and power kicks for unsuitable leaders. Encouraging whole-group activity, like wikis or special group lists or other shared projects, is a good way to increase engagement in individual groups.

The idea of critical mass comes from Diffusion of Innovations theory, which can describe why people adopt (or don't adopt) a new product/service. Ideas from the theory (used in many fields) would suggest if we want people to use Talk in general, or specific Groups more, it will take more than a moderator or a new group picture to get people to be more active. Is Talk too complex, with too many choices, or not complex enough, not integrated enough with the rest of the site? How visible is Talk during the sign-up process? Maybe we need to update the LT tour to feature the benefits of using Talk and Groups. Few seem to ask the question, but are we sure that the majority of LT members even WANT to talk about books online; is Talk compatible with their preferences and lifestyles? Does it offer any advantage to them? Maybe a lot of them really do only want a place to catalog their books and/or to find recommendations and reviews!

31> Some excellent points. A good analogy is if you made an MMORPG that had a massive amount of explorable content. There were hundreds of cities any user could travel to, each filled with shops and taverns and the like.

The likely result? No matter where you are, there would never be anyone to talk to. The only exceptions probably being the place closest to the starting area.

LT's groups suffer greatly from sprawl. It's a noble goal to allow anyone to create any group they want. But in reality, it results in a wasteland of crumbling buildings. Newcomers try to pick through these ruins looking for the places where people still gather. What might "help" Talk the most (if your goal is for most groups to be fairly active) is to have a strict "trial period" for groups. If they don't get a certain amount of traffic within a certain of time (sustained, not just a burst up front and then nothing), they're gone. Imploded. Wiped from the face of the site.

31- I engage in a bit of drive-by analysis with Groups from time to time. The two that surprise me are the Folio Society devotees and Librarians who LibraryThing. FSD has 565 members and is a genuine online community with its attendant ups and downs. LWL has 7,766 members but is not quite an online community. FSD is focused on a narrow niche and most members share a fondness for that niche. Librarians deal with huge swaths of information in hundreds of areas and it seems this does not lead to strong online community-ness. At least it seems that way on LT.

Critical mass and niche groups: caffron makes some good points in 31. But I've also found that the really large groups often have excessively vocal, irritating people who often have an opinion about everything, including things they know nothing about. So, if you really want to talk about a small subset of a large topic with a compatible group of people, it often seems like a better idea to set up a new group. Of course, if you can't get critical mass for the new group, it doesn't work. So, I don't have a good solution.

33: LWL members are generally on a lot of other professional forums, so sometimes the conversations are drifting back and forth. So, it's hard for a community to gel here.

This thread motivated me to click on "All Groups" and I've been having a merry time exploring.

11> there is a very small, but active (as in, not dormant and with recent posts) beading group - http://www.librarything.com/groups/beadingbuffs

Looks like combining groups should be a possibility - for instance, all the little Twilight groups.

or, like this group: http://www.librarything.com/groups/thequestforthelastpa#forums
which has added links to "sister groups."

35>

Looks like combining groups should be a possibility

Tim suggested that a while back, but it wasn't a very popular suggestion.

for instance, all the little Twilight groups.

You periodically see new groups crop up for this sort of thing, and I'll usually leave a comment for the creator alerting them to the large and active Harry Potter or Twilight or whatever group. The most recent one said, basically, "Thanks, but I want to run my own group, and hopefully they'll all come over here instead!" I suspect a non-trivial fraction of dead groups are duplicates like this.

36> Good example of why there should be a "trial period" after which failed groups get expunged. It's also the downside to encouraging more "ownership" over groups. Splitters!

#37 - The idea of getting rid of unused groups is attractive, but I have at least two groups which don't get posted in very often, I think all of their threads are dormant, but I do go there to refer to things which have been posted in the threads. Also, though the members don't often have topics of conversation, we know where to go when we have a question or comment about the topic of the group. I would hate to loose access to either one of them. I suppose if one knew that the group would be expunged if not posted in frequently, members could do drive-by greetings in the group or something.

38> Well, the way I proposed it before was that a new group would have a trial period. They'd have to get X amount of traffic (sustained, not just a bunch of posts the first day), from Y amount of people for Z days. There could be some algorithm that weights different factors. Once they pass the trial period of being a viable group, then they'd just go dormant like they do now. If they didn't pass it, they'd be expunged. I think that'd get rid of a ton of cruft like the "I want to run my own group" that never manage to get off the ground.

I think there's a general aversion to deleting people's words and while there may not be anything posted to a group that never made it off the ground, maybe someone posted something brilliant. You just don't know. And I don't think anybody is comfortable with someone else making a decision about whether someone's words are worthy either.

What's wrong with letting the deadwood accumulate as defunct groups? Is it possibly losing the use of a good group name? If that's the case then Tim could just let someone assume the management of the defunct group with the name that they want.

Off topic, but I'd be more interested in Tim cleaning out some abandoned accounts. A lot of them only have a few books which I imagine could negatively effect the recommendation algorithms (although maybe Tim already discounts libraries with very few books). And more than a few are completely messed up with data in the wrong columns because of a bad upload.

40> I think there's a general aversion to deleting people's words ... What's wrong with letting the deadwood accumulate as defunct groups?

Tim says:We have more groups now than we can support. We've either got to kill some in a way that their corpse isn't a problem, or allow them to get new live with new admins.

Some groups have NO posts. Those could be totally removed. Also old and inactive accounts with no books. I doubt many people would be against that.

43> Also old and inactive accounts with no books. I doubt many people would be against that.

Yeah, but that gets into a whole different issue. Those accounts are useful so LT can compete with GoodReads on phoney-baloney "total users" stats. Tim has only said we need to cull groups, not users. I agree with you that it would be nice if they were culled, though.

42> Tim says:We have more groups now than we can support. We've either got to kill some in a way that their corpse isn't a problem, or allow them to get new live with new admins.

But then we asked him what he means by that and he never responded. I don't think the issue is disk space so it must be mind space. But he hasn't shown me yet how that's a problem.

Does anyone think all this has something to do with the new "social" person Tim has hired? I'm wondering if that person is telling Tim that in order to be a successful social site you have to have groups with moderators etc. etc.?

45> But then we asked him what he means by that and he never responded. I don't think the issue is disk space so it must be mind space. But he hasn't shown me yet how that's a problem.

Seems like a moot point. How does either way contradict 42? I assume a contradiction since you started with "but." Right now dormant groups have everything done to them short of being deleted. And deleted can include "still on the hard drive, but there's no way for users to get to them" for this discussion since it boils down to the same thing.

>47 brightcopy: It means we don't take Tim's words as the gospel truth unless he can justify them. It's not enough for him to claim that there are too many groups; we aren't going to believe it unless he can present a convincing argument for why.

I hope this isn't the doing of the new "social" person.

48> I already believe there are too many groups. Whether that be because of disk space, programming constraints or the fact that it fragments an already small community is a moot point to me. So I don't really need convincing, on that score. Understood if others do, I guess.

>49 brightcopy: Well, what are your reasons for thinking it?

I don't see that disk space or programming constraints could really be an issue. Storage is cheap, and the programming is done.

So then there's the question of fragmenting a small community. I don't think that's true. Group membership isn't exclusive; it's not like each member has to choose only one group. I participate in plenty of active groups, and belonging to inactive niche groups doesn't make me post any less in the active ones.

Right now dormant groups have everything done to them short of being deleted.

Not really. The only differences I can find between a regular group and a dormant one is that the dormant one is that you have to click on a (more) link on the search page to find it and it shows up on the All Groups page with (Dormant) behind it. I'd characterize dormant groups as being regular groups with minor cosmetic differences.

51> Not really.

Okay. Describe the difference in the UI when someone searches between a dormant group and a (presuming Tim ever whacked one) deleted group, please.

50> Since I don't have any behind-the-scenes knowledge of the code, I can only speak to what I can see. I've tried to hunt down the best group on X before, and had it be a rather frustrating task full of detritus. This is especially true if the once lively group for a topic has gone dormant along with all the other never-got-going ones.

As far as fragmenting goes, I'm talking about multiple groups on the same topic, not several different mostly non-overlapping groups.

I think there really can be legitimate reasons on the programming side. LT makes heavy use of caching and memory management. From what I've seen, they use every iota of spare RAM on the servers they can to cache stuff.

This is especially true if the once lively group for a topic has gone dormant along with all the other never-got-going ones.

This seems like it should just be an issue of search ordering. Doesn't the once-lively group show up above the others? If not, why?

The problem with "multiple groups on the same topic" is who gets to decide whether two groups are the same? Two groups might have similar topics but entirely different approaches. I was not pleased when a group for Canadians was created and Tim tried to say that it was redundant because there was already a group for Canadian literature. We've gone the attempted group-combination route before, and when it comes down to it, there's almost always some difference between two groups such that their members don't want them to be combined.

I wouldn't object to archiving certain groups, though, and making them even less integrated in the site than dormant groups are. I don't know enough about the programming aspect to say whether this would be much help, though.

I'd expect a deleted group to be gone. Now Tim says when a book is deleted it isn't really gone, just marked with a deleted flag, so maybe it wouldn't actually be gone, but there would be no way to get to it through the member UI.

I can imagine an archived status where a group can be searched for and its threads read, but it can't be posted to. I'd expect an archived group to be moved to a different area (whatever that means) so that it's name could be reused.

Maybe people shouldn't be able to create groups whenever they want. Maybe they should stay in a proposed state until enough people join. But then you couldn't have groups for a small number of people to work in some project.

53> As far as searching goes, it depends on if you get the right search term. I've searched before and though got results containing a bunch of dormant groups. This led me to believe there were groups for this topic and they all failed (and these were all of them). Only later did I realize I needed to tweak the search term to find the OTHER group(s), whether they were lively or dormant (but originally more active than those other dormant ones).

As far as your other points, would all of that fall under the trial period I proposed? No PERSON gets decide whether two groups are the same. It's all about activity. It wouldn't be perfect, but I think it'd be an improvement. I think this would cover your Canadian example.

54> I'd expect a deleted group to be gone.

Here was my point originally - what we already have now for dormant is one step short of being deleted. The next step is "doesn't return in results of a search/browse." I'm not sure what would effectively be between what we have now and some new "even more dormant" proposal. Maybe you'd have to enter a CAPTCHA? Click on a hidden pixel? I'd seriously love to hear how this would actually look. :D

The suggestions you outlined in your last paragraph don't really seems significantly different than existing dormant ones. I really don't see how any of that would actually address the issues in my first paragraph here. If you'd said "dormant groups would never be cached and you'd have to use a special slower search", that would be a fair point on the technical side.

55> But then you couldn't have groups for a small number of people to work in some project.

Maybe that's not what LT Talk should really be for? LT doesn't have to be the all-purpose discussion tool. There are lots of other ways already out there on the internet for communication for small, low traffic projects. E-mail being one of the most obvious ones.

Thanks for linking to the bead group, bright copy.

I am fairly new to posting in the forums, so I don't feel what I have to say should have much weight compared to someone who has used them for years.

I do think in some cases it would be a good idea to merge some groups that have very few members and posts.

If they could get the group of people to agree on it. Then the ones left could be wiped off the site. Posts from the former group that they find are important could always be copied and added to the new group. It might be a hassle at first, but once finished things would just carry on as usual. I am talking about very small groups.

Ones with no posts or shelved with a few books that have sat there for years. Wasting space.

I think it was brightcopy that mentioned having a set time limit for new users groups. That would stop a lot of unnecessary (similar groups) starting up. It would also give that person time to get to know other people here at LT. If a new user starts a group, it is not likely the regulars are going to jump in and join. If a well known user starts a new group, it would attract more people.

Just my opinion.

58> All credit goes to 2wonderY for the bead thingy.

And I think what you have to say carries equal weight, just in different areas. One of the big annoyances of the clutter in group is that it makes it a much less approachable system for new users. I'm a fairly new user (since February), and that was my experience. People who have been here longer are more likely to have been in on the ground floor and aren't as likely to have to search for common groups as new users. They probably subscribed to them early on in the process and never looked back.

My only concern about the trial-period idea is that it might discourage exactly the activity that we're trying to promote. Would people be reluctant to become fully engaged in a group if they thought it might just disappear in a couple of weeks? I guess to a large extent that would depend on how stringent the participation requirements were. It's certainly worth considering the idea more closely.

Also, I don't think I'd mind removing archived groups from search.

60> Would people be reluctant to become fully engaged in a group if they thought it might just disappear in a couple of weeks?

But isn't that what would basically happen with any other approach than what we have now, approaches that are basically expelling their group to Siberia?

Just wanted to say that I completely and wholeheartedly agree with melannen (18, 21) re: ownership, bystanders, and how people operate in online communities. This has been my experience as well in a variety of online settings. Giving people responsibilities makes them invested. Invested people build active communities.

And hope as you might, general 'this applies to everyone' responsibilities and encouragements simply do not work unless you are the sort of person who feels comfortable stepping right in and getting down to work.

I think some of us - especially the most vocal people because it is pretty much the definition! - should consider that you may be this sort of person, and so you're seeing things from this perspective.

I say this as someone who is usually that person - the one who feels comfortable starting things and taking things on. I've argued the 'people should just feel comfortable to do it!' side before and I've had others point this out to me. It's hard for people who are go-getters to realize that there are others out there able and even willing to do the same work, or sometimes even /better/ work, if only they feel that they have some measure of 'right' and responsibility to do it.

56> The suggestions you outlined in your last paragraph don't really seems significantly different than existing dormant ones.

You don't think that not being able to post to the archived groups isn't a big difference? I think it's a much bigger difference than showing (dormant) after their name on the All Groups page.

Also, I agree that fragmenting the userbase is a problem and it is better to have fewer, larger groups than more, smaller groups. People /can/ join every Twilight group, but they're really pretty unlikely to.

I'd be in favor of deleting groups with no content (or very little content) after X amount of time.

63> You don't think that not being able to post to the archived groups isn't a big difference?

Yeah, it's a fair point. But honestly, I don't think it will be that big of a difference because I wonder how often dormant groups are ever un-dormanted. Would love some numbers from Tim.

62> I'm the kind of person who is highly opinionated and likes to post. jjwilson61 will back me up, I'm sure. ;) I already have some users who seem to have sworn a blood oath against me because they're tired of reading what I think of things (not sure why their member-blocking function isn't working...) I can only imagine how a strengthened creator/admin role might play into that. Either people would use the fact that I'm not an admin as even more reason to bash my opinion on things since they're less "authoritative" than the admin's opinions, or I'd apply to the admin job myself and they'd be enraged that they now have to listen to that blowhard speak with some authority! :D

#60 I thought the same thing Zoe. That it might and probably will discourage people from starting a new group. It would discourage me.

There are groups I would love to participate in that I find a bit intimidating and hesitate joining in even though I want to. Just lurking and reading there doesn't keep me interested as much as being a participant. That is my own problem though. And starting a similar group would probably end up being the same thing.

Having a time limit might discourage a new user, but in the end it is probably a good thing. It gives them time to get to know other people here first which in turn, if they still want to start a group, they have people here they can ask to join. They have a better feel for how well a new group would go over.

I am glad I held off starting a Bead group. I know enough now to go out and find if there is enough interest. I am going to go to other bead forums and see how many people want to join LT and show off their bead books. I would love to know how good a book is before I buy it. It might be months from now. But it is better that having a Group no one posts to.

It's hard for people who are go-getters to realize that there are others out there able and even willing to do the same work, or sometimes even /better/ work, if only they feel that they have some measure of 'right' and responsibility to do it.

But is there really no other possible incentive besides saying that no one else is allowed to do that thing? Something like helper badges or barnstars that said "these actions are appreciated"? A notification somewhere saying that people are welcome and encouraged to act? Even jjwilson's idea of letting anyone designate themselves an "admin"?

Maybe it's true that my perspective is skewed, but at the same time, I know I would be less likely to do some of the things that I currently do (welcome members to groups that I didn't create, invite people to relevant groups that I didn't create, start threads in an attempt to generate discussion in groups that I didn't create) if I were told that those jobs belonged to other people. I'm not convinced that it's worth driving away potentially larger numbers of people who are currently engaged just to encourage the greater engagement of a few.

I'd rather strive towards the greater ideal of getting everyone engaged and feeling a sense of ownership, even if a 100% success rate isn't possible. It seems better than setting a maximum success rate of 5% engagement from the start (I think I remember someone suggesting one admin per 20 people).

But isn't that what would basically happen with any other approach than what we have now, approaches that are basically expelling their group to Siberia?


Oops, I forgot to respond to this one. I don't think new groups are automatically doomed to failure at all.

69> Oops, I forgot to respond to this one. I don't think new groups are automatically doomed to failure at all.

Then I don't think new groups are automatically doomed to fail the trial period at all.

My point is that the same thing applies to both; if your group doesn't reach critical mass or later falls below critical mass, something bad happens to it. One proposal was deletion after a trial period. Another proposal was being exiled to Siberia after it goes dormant. I'm just not sure there's all that much of a difference between those two in terms of user discouragement.

>70 brightcopy: Oh, I see your point. I think there's a huge difference between being deleted and being marked dormant, though.

71> Guess we'll have to agree to disagree, then. :)

ETA: And I was talking about the new approaches, the "ultra-dormant" approaches that have been talked about in this thread. Not just regular "dormant."

I like the term archived. It makes it seem like you have to go into the cellar and dig through some old musty books to find what you're looking for.

An archived group wouldn't be alive anymore. You wouldn't be able to post to it. All you could do is read old dead threads for research purposes. Hopefully you'd be able to reuse the group name because active group names and archived group names wouldn't conflict.

73> Hopefully you'd be able to reuse the group name because active group names and archived group names wouldn't conflict.

Couldn't that be a bit confusing?

It could be, but if you made it so you had to do a separate search for archived groups maybe it would work. I'm just throwing out ideas of how to get rid of the groups without getting rid of the data.

More group stuff. On the Zeitgeist page appears this data- Groups 7,078. That's a fairly ungainly number of groups to slog through for someone trying to find a group containing their interests. I'd rather it be something like:

Active Groups- XXXX (Call it activity within the past year)
Dormant Groups- XXXX (Give the obscure topics another year to find new posters)
Archived Groups-XXXX (No activity in two years gets a group archived)

A`link to each area. Archived is read-only. Archived and Dormant are both taken out of anything that requires cache. Maybe a mini-archive only search engine so the main search engine doesn't sift through all that archived material.

I like the idea of old data being archived rather than obliterated.

What would people think of creating some big-tent groups, like "History" and then allowing members to create "interest groups" within them. So you could follow histoy, or you could just follow History > Ancient History?

That sounds like a great idea.

>77 timspalding: Not really a fan, sorry.

I'm writing it up in greater detail.

So the idea is that, if there aren't enough people interested in Medieval History in particular, at least the group can be populated by people who have a general interest in history but wouldn't bother to follow the individual group? Do you think this will improve the level of discussion or the engagement of the group members?

>77 timspalding: I think that this is a great idea; particularly if subscribing to an upper level gives a member a single view of the contents of all subgroups.

Here's my write-up: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104253

> 68 But is there really no other possible incentive besides saying that no one else is allowed to do that thing?

I don't see anyone saying this! Giving someone a sense of responsibility for a thing is not the same as saying no one else can do it.

Maybe it's true that my perspective is skewed, but at the same time, I know I would be less likely to do some of the things that I currently do (welcome members to groups that I didn't create, invite people to relevant groups that I didn't create, start threads in an attempt to generate discussion in groups that I didn't create) if I were told that those jobs belonged to other people.

This is presumptuous of me, but I don't believe you. ;) I think that you, as a go-getter, are going to step up and do things that you see that need done, because that's how you work. It's awesome. I respect it a lot.

>84 Aerrin99: Thanks, Aerrin :). I'm not sure your assessment of me is entirely right, but I appreciate the compliment anyway!

Haha. Well. I said it was presumptuous! ;)

And with that, I will agree with your comment in the other thread that we are pretty clear on our positions and leave things to rest for awhile, on the chance that someone less talkative has something to say and would like to get a word in edgewise.