Archiving groups, combining groups.

We're going to be refreshing the look and feel of groups soon. Over the next month or so, a lot will change.

I've already made a few changes, to move us where I want to be.

Archiving Groups. Groups that haven't had a post in a year have moved from "dormant" to "archived." While dormant groups can be revived with a post, archived groups cannot.

There is a loss here. I'm sad to see certain groups go. Even if it's been dead for years, I liked having the Alexander the Great group on my profile. And if I posted to it, maybe it would find its way to someone interested in the topic. But the overall effect of so many groups has been to add dead weight to the social experience. We need to prune to let the plant grow, as it were.

Combining Groups. I'm not sure how to handling combining groups, but I think we need to do it, especially with site related groups. Right now we have Talk about LibaryThing, New Features and Recommended Site Improvements. Okay, but then we ALSO have multiple groups devoted to curation-helping issues, including

* Combiners! https://www.librarything.com/groups/combiners
* Common Knowledge, WikiThing, HelpThing https://www.librarything.com/groups/commonknowledge
* Flaggers https://www.librarything.com/groups/flaggers
* LibraryThing Series https://www.librarything.com/groups/inallseriesness

There are other easy combos, like:

* Hacking LibraryThing https://www.librarything.com/groups/hackinglibrarything
* LibraryThing API Development https://www.librarything.com/groups/librarythingapidevel

My inclination here is to do some combination here. I can add something like "originally posted to X" and keep around the old group. But, honesty, *I* didn't realize there was a separate group for flagging. As for series, we've been talking about series mostly outside of the series group. I never look at the series group. And I certainly didn't announce all the new series features there.

Thoughts?

Those are my thoughts. Anyone?

Please leave the curation related groups for individual items separate.

Talk about LibaryThing

SpellCheck!

Please do NOT combine "Combiners!", "CK etc", "Flaggers", and "LT Series". They may all involve "curation-helping", but in completely different areas. There is really no overlap; the purposes of the groups are different.

(I pretty much never go into the Series group, because I don't particularly care about Series, rarely go to "CK etc" and "Flaggers" But I'm frequently in "Combiners!".)

Please don't combine all of the helper-related groups! It's really useful to have all of those separate.

I'm with >2 gilroy: and 3. I don't see any advantage to combining these groups. Having all the topics together would make it much harder to look for a specific topic you want.

Yes, what they all said. It would also make checking for duplicate threads more difficult, meaning even more repetitive requests.

Groups that haven't had a post in a year have moved from "dormant" to "archived."

Will their names disappear from Profiles, and

Will there be an "Archived Groups" page somewhere?

>1 timspalding: I'm not particularly in favor of combining the curation related groups, but I can see an argument for combining the series and CK group; until very recently series were part of CK and many people have been going to the CK group to ask series related questions.

Flaggers deals with flagging/counter flagging reviews, covers, and author pics, so that seems like something that could be folded into Spam Fighters.

There seems to be a fair amount of overlap in the sorts of questions that are asked in this group and in the Frequently Asked Questions group: https://www.librarything.com/groups/faq

Those might be a candidate for combining.

Casting my comment in with the rest requesting the Helper groups not be combined.

You are hearing from the helpers. Please don’t combine the curation groups.

Maybe it's time for some sort of "super-group" feature. Because I can't see a justification for groups for this or that feature, but most of the discussion about them happens elsewhere. The series group is almost moribund. 16 posts in 2020 and the main series page goes back to 2011.

As for flaggers, isn't most flagging conversation going on in the spam group? I can see only one conversation there started this year. I guess the practice is to add to topics that were years old. But still.

Maybe we need to gather them all together in a "Helpers" area.

What evidence would be convincing? I'm going to did up some stats on who's looking at what. Do people even know these groups exist? Surely if they aren't being used, but they're also fragmenting the conversation, that's a problem.

If two groups have nearly 100% overlap in members or is moribund then it makes sense to think about combining them. But please don't combine all the healthy helper groups together.

>12 timspalding: A super-group feature could be a good solution.

I think the issue of posting frequency makes sense for a lot of the common interest groups; ones that have never been or aren't currently active. But the help groups aren't really there for the sake of shared hobbies or popularity.

They're there for questions to be asked and answered on matters specifically pertaining to the maintenance of the site, however often, or not, people need help in clearing up any confusion. As others have stated, the separation also makes it easier to find topics pertaining to specific problem-sets.

That's just my opinion on why they shouldn't be combined. Perhaps I'm missing something, though.

>9 lilithcat: Brings up a good point, however, about groups that have a lot of subject overlap. In those cases, combining could make a lot of sense.

>12 timspalding: The series group is almost moribund. 16 posts in 2020 and the main series page goes back to 2011.

The LibraryThing Series group has had hundreds of posts this year, with the most recent little more than a week ago. Which series group are you talking about?

I guess the practice is to add to topics that were years old.

Yes, that's how we keep topics organized in these groups.

But still.

We members use these helper groups to improve or maintain this site of yours, but you're talking about them as if they're nearly worthless. Then you come off as if you're refusing to listen to helpers say we don't want the groups smashed together. That's a little insulting.

>15 aspirit: I guess he meant to write "16 topics", not "16 posts".

>12 timspalding:, >15 aspirit:

If this is the one that's meant: http://www.librarything.com/groups/inallseriesness it's 16 topics in 2020, not 16 posts.

And a couple of those topics have more than 200 posts. Granted, some have just a couple, but that's generally because a question was asked and quickly answered, and the problem solved.

>16 anglemark: okay, and those are 16 topics that aren't buried among the CK and Combiners topics.

>16 anglemark:

Okay, here are some year statistics.

https://www.librarything.com/groups/inallseriesness

13 topics
378 message posted

https://www.librarything.com/groups/flaggers

1 topics
53 messages

https://www.librarything.com/groups/commonknowledge

27 topics
226 messages

So as I see it the problem is a screen like this.



I think any normal visitor to the site would look at that and say "2016? This is dead."

I hope you can agree or at least understand the problem. Perhaps there's a UI fix here, but I don't know. It seems to me that if a group has so little action, and most of it in a few topics or, in the case of flaggers, basically ONE, the answer is to combine it in with other groups devoted to the same basic task. The topic title is the topic, not the group it's in.

If not, then why are we stopping here. Why not separate out CK, Wikithing, and HelpThing? Why not have separate groups for many other types of helper actions?

>20 timspalding: So only show the past year on the first page.

You were complaining particularly about the series group that has averaged a message a day over the last year. That is not dead.

I look at a screen from some of the more popular groups and am overwhelmed. There is no way I can get up to speed with a group that has had over 300 messages in the past week.

>20 timspalding:

I think any normal visitor to the site would look at that and say "2016? This is dead."

As long as there are other recent posts there--as in this case--they might think, "so, not too many problems here, people must be keeping on top of them, good job".

Maybe I'm missing something?--but I don't see why the "helpers"-type groups would HAVE to be super-active all the time...

So, I guess Combiners gets the most traffic because it provides such "basic" services, Flaggers is more "specialised", with fewer people who are interested in that function or come across it and so on...

The primary concern of the LT team is how to make LT groups look good to new members who mistakenly believe only the most recent discussions are relevent. Got it.

My concern here is that the most active helpers have to reference years-old threads because many problems reoccur. We can't remember everything. The most popular threads in these group are easy to find when an issue needs a quick call-out and response. The reason why they aren't even more popular, I think, is because the confusing and buggy parts of this site wear members down. Functionality overall is not what's being fixed, though. I'm fairly certain that for me, one of the most active helpers (among many) and a topic-starter in one of those groups, the LT 2.0 redesign and its related changes will continue to make this site more difficult to use.

And one of thoughts was there was no point in sharing my thoughts in Talk about LibraryThing and New Features topics. I guess most of the times I do is to vent so I don't log out and not return.

>22 LolaWalser: Maybe I'm missing something?--but I don't see why the "helpers"-type groups would HAVE to be super-active all the time...

Exactly. They have a very specific purpose, and I think people coming onto the site, even for the first time, will recognize that. They won't necessarily take few recent posts as people not paying attention to them anymore.

>21 MarthaJeanne: The series group has seen a jump in posting numbers mostly because of the new series call for help threads, which are already slowing down. The next longest thread in the group is for moving series to publishers series, something that can now be done with about two clicks. So, not dead, but rarely active outside of two topics.

Smooshing all of the help groups into one is definitely not the way to go, but combining two small, slow groups that have overlap in function doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

>20 timspalding:

I think any normal visitor to the site would look at that and say "2016? This is dead."

I don't think a regular visitor to the site would be interested in such a group nor look for it anyway?
So I'm not sure that is a valid point.

I do like your suggestion to provide more structure in general as I find the structure and the UI for Groups and Talk very poor, but I'm afraid I'm not knowledgeable enough about alternatives to provide any meaningful suggestions.

Exactly. They have a very specific purpose, and I think people coming onto the site, even for the first time, will recognize that. They won't necessarily take few recent posts as people not paying attention to them anymore.

But flagging. Is flagging a very specific thing? Divorced from the many different context—covers, groups, users, lists, etc.

I overlooked yet another helper group:

* Author and venue pictures https://www.librarything.com/groups/authorpictures

6 topics in 2020
10 messages in 2020

>20 timspalding: But the thing is we don't normally visit group pages once we subscribe to the group. When new messages appear, we see them in talk. Even when I post a new topic, I do it from Talk. Combining them would only mean everyone would see all of those groups, even though they might only want to follow combiners or whatever

Regarding previously mentioned possibility of having groups and talk in one place, I've been meaning to post that I was initially confused what one or the other is and why are there two places for what's essentially an LT forum, so some interface design that wouldn't make them look like two distinct parts of the site is probably a good idea. 'Explore groups' prominently on the talk page and vice versa

>29 SandraArdnas:

I recognize that combining could lead to people seeing topics they don't care about, but conversely, many are surely unaware that there are so many groups.

Do you know how many people read a post in the flaggers group in the last week? Three! I just made it four by reading one. In the last month? 5!

We have to find some happy medium, because when we're insisting flaggers be kept separate, then there's no reason to lump series and publisher series, not to mention CK, HelpThing and WikiThing.

>30 timspalding:

Do you know how many people read a post in the flaggers group in the last week? Three! I just made it four by reading one. In the last month? 5!

But, surely... how many people read a group is less important than that those who do read it find it useful, navigable etc. If you're in Flaggers it's because you need some thing done/explained etc. about flagging, or because you enjoy cleaning up flags etc.

If you combine it with another group, you'll only be making it that much harder for people who do the work in those groups.

This is also interesting. Right now "activity" is based on number of messages posted, but read and posted don't line up. I think I need to make "activity" a combination of both.

Number of Users Posted
1 75 Books Challenge for 2020
2 Folio Society devotees
3 Name that Book
4 2020 Category Challenge
5 Talk about LibraryThing
6 The Green Dragon
7 Club Read 2020
8 Pro and Con
9 Book talk
10 2020 ROOT CHALLENGE
11 Bug Collectors
12 50 Book Challenge
13 Science Fiction Fans
14 Reading Globally
15 What Are You Reading Now?
16 Booklikers on LibraryThing
17 George Macy devotees
18 1001 Books to read before you die
19 New features
20 Easton Press Collectors

Number of Users Who Read
1 Folio Society devotees
2 Talk about LibraryThing
3 75 Books Challenge for 2020
4 Name that Book
5 New features
6 The Green Dragon
7 Book talk
8 Fine Press Forum
9 Pro and Con
10 Club Read 2020
11 2020 Category Challenge
12 Bug Collectors
13 Recommend Site Improvements
14 Science Fiction Fans
15 Welcome to LibraryThing!
16 Frequently Asked Questions
17 Early Reviewers
18 Combiners!
19 George Macy devotees
20 Common Knowledge, WikiThing, HelpThing

Also--no doubt you have the best data on this--Talk activity overall has gone down noticeably. I won't try to say for how long, feels like gradual decline over years.

Not that I'd think of that as a problem, seems to be a common thing for forum-based online interaction.

(posted before #32, if that matters)

>31 LolaWalser: But people are talking about flagging outside the flagging group. Indeed, as far as I can see, most discussion of flagging is outside of the group—mostly in the spam group. This is no surprise, when almost nobody is in it or looking at the flagging group. Ditto series—most discussion of series isn't happening in the series group.

I mean, maybe I should give members a way of kicking posts out of other groups, and into the underutilized flagging group.

>30 timspalding: and >32 timspalding: is the number of users who read a post based on status change? I'm guessing that when someone rereads an old topic, you won't see that user as reading the posts.

(Yes, some of reread posts in helper topics.)

Well I'm not a participant in those groups (but I would know to go to them if needed), so it would be better to see what they say; however, right now it does seem as if combining even just a couple 'small" helper groups wouldn't achieve much good, probably, but it would for certain make things harder precisely for people who contribute the most, which is a very counter-intuitive move, imo.

To me it seems that any discussion of flagging happening in Spam fighters is incidental and related to spamming, whereas different types of flagging problems/questions bring people to Flagging.

Also I'm not clear on what would be the use of narrowly directing topics... could you even do it and why would you? I mean, every active conversation is prone to digression and thread drift anyway. And if, in such a small forum as this, plus such small groups, every time a dialogue occurs a word or a term sends people to a whole different group... *shrug* I'd think it would cause more discouragement than will to engage.

And if we're talking about newbies, I don't even see but a minuscule fraction of such posts, and yet so many first timers seem to get a cold shower in response to "how to" questions already ("go to the CORRECT group for that question", "READ group descriptions!" etc)

JMO, sorry about the length

I have a suggestion: Why not combine that putative Helper Group with Name That Book?

After all, from the perspective of a new, uninformed user, both groups are just different variants on "solving users' problems". And think of all the traffic and messages that could be aggregated in that group! Clearly this is a much better approach than keeping the two separate. Even the putative Helper Group on its own might not get the kind of traffic that a new "normal" user might not scoff at, and combining it into NTB handily prevents that from ever happening.

And why not add Book Talk to this mix? I'm not a member of this Group, and I know that the people who actually use this group think it's its own separate thing, but if you actually look at the posts made there, they're mostly just Name That Book posts. I counted: that covers 58 topics out of the 99 listed on the first page. On the first four pages (going back to 3 March), a full 256 out of 396 topics were NTB threads! That is a full 64.65%. Clearly, to a new user, there is very little point in keeping these two separate: most of the engagement in Book Talk is really meant for the Name That Book group. And it is equally obvious that a group with barely a third of its threads actually on-topic cannot be said to justify its raison d'être.

</s>

Ok, enough with the sarcasm.

Tim, the reasons you've offered for lumping all Helper groups into one group are the following:

1. Similarity in subject area when viewed from above (>1 timspalding:).
   Ok, good argument in principle. But multiple members here have warned you that you're over-lumping in this particular case. My first reaction is to agree with them.
2. You were unaware of the existence of one group. (>1 timspalding:, >28 timspalding:)
   Irrelevant argument.
3. Much of recent talk about Series has been in conjunction with the new design. (>1 timspalding:)
   The unspoken conclusion is that Series, outside of LT2 reworkings of the CK Series, is not worthy of its own group. I disagree.
4. Flagging should be folded into something else because one sub-type of Helping that also uses flags (spam) has its own group. (>12 timspalding:)
   I don't think this is a valid reason to fold Flagging into other types of Helping activity
5. Old topics above the fold? Ew! (>12 timspalding:)
   There are other ways of removing these supposedly unsightly topics from above the fold. (A UI fix, as you call it in >20 timspalding:)
6. "Do people even know these groups exist?" (>12 timspalding:)
   The people actively engaged in that type of Helping clearly do, and they've let you know in no uncertain terms. Again, the unspoken answer to this (rhetorical?) question you imagine to be "no", despite evidence to the contrary.
7. "Surely if they aren't being used, but they're also fragmenting the conversation, that's a problem." (>12 timspalding:)
   Several people have chimed in to say that they see this "fragmenting" as specialization, i.e. a feature, not a bug.
8. Flaggers only having one active topic this year (>19 timspalding:)
   Ok, this I think is a good argument: the Flagging group's activity in 2020 can be reduced to a single thread in another group. Good point.
9. Groups should be high-activity, or "normal" users might think they're dead (>20 timspalding:)
   Invalid assumption. Several other people (e.g. >14 Carmen.et.Error: and >24 Carmen.et.Error:) have pointed out that not all Groups are designed with a high topic turnove in mind. These are not "normal" users; these are Helpers, who are by definition not "normal" users.
10. "Why not separate out CK, Wikithing, and HelpThing?" (>20 timspalding:)
    The Helpers involved do not see the need to? The lumping/splitting divide has already established an equilibrium?

For the record: I'm not against combining similar groups into one -- consolidating and streamlining and improving user experience are all things I can fully get behind. But lumping all Helper groups into one super group where the various subject areas drown each other out is something I would like to see better arguments for, if only to actually address the objections made upthread.

On the other hand, I also understand knee-jerk resistance to a change in workflow (obvious reference is obvious). I'm not sure which behaviour I'm seeing here -- overly zealous clean-up, or aversion to change.

Would there be an option to "flair" threads in this Super Helper Group that you're proposing? Would Helpers be able to filter threads on this topic? If so, I think many objections to your proposed streamlining would, if not disappear, then certainly lose in knee-jerkiness.

Look, the number of posts/posters in a groups says nothing about its utility.

Different groups serve different purposes.

Some are purely social, others are based on shared interests, others are site-related. It's ridiculous to compare the number of posts/posters in a group like Green Dragon (which I have had on ignore for years because it was taking over the Talk page) with something like Spam Fighters or Flaggers in which topics are created to address a particular issue that arises at a particular point in time.

>37 Petroglyph:

IIRC, the reason there are so many "help me find this book" posts in Book Talk is because that's where the posts made from the main page (when the poster is not in any specific group) get directed to automatically.

People have been asking forever if the default couldn't be the Name That Book instead, AFAIK.

>38 lilithcat:

Yes, this.

Maybe we should be asking how Tim is thinking combined groups would work. Right now our only reference on how a LT group works is under the current system, and combining two groups under the current system *would* make things even more difficult to find. But if Tim is thinking that threads could be organized by subject and there would be a way to make threads with commonly asked questions easily accessible, then wouldn't combining a couple of small groups that have significant overlap make sense? Perhaps if Tim could explain to us how he envisions combined groups would work we would better understand his position.

>39 LolaWalser:
I do know that, and I am aware of the RSIs. I was merely exaggerating.

>40 amanda4242:
agreed

>39 LolaWalser: Yes, we're going to redesign the initial-posting page, so that you don't get a default, but have to choose. And we'll curate the list better.

>42 timspalding: Hooray!!

>12 timspalding: As for flaggers, isn't most flagging conversation going on in the spam group?

Well, yes. I guess that's a fair observation.

Okay, I think you may have bludgeoned me into submission!

I do feel strongly that flaggers is pretty lame as a group. Most flagging is discussed elsewhere.

I also feel strongly we should consider some sort of overarching "helpers" group. Where does all the stuff people to do help fall now, if there's no group?

Looking over these groups, I see a number of questions asking about things which are actually covered by help pages; the trouble is, help isn't easy to navigate and is sometimes woefully out of date.* If help was made more user friendly, it would be easier to keep the help pages updated and would save helpers from having to explain the same things over and over again. I believe doing that in conjunction with somehow grouping help groups together (not necessarily by combining them) would greatly improve LT's usability.

*Before I updated it recently, the work combining help page hadn't been updated in eight years. It didn't cover how to use the workbench, which is now several years old!

How is combination going to work? Admin fiat? Something like tag combination, where users can propose and vote on combinations?

Most of the discussion this far have been about the curator groups (which are anyway grouped on the main Groups page, so easy enough to find), but what about "normal" groups? I'm not sure what problem there is to solve, as far as I've seen duplicate groups tend to go dormant and discussion continues in the more active one.

>34 timspalding: I seem to recall suggesting some years ago that talk posts should be able to be reassigned to a different group. I think my purpose at the time was to deal with the myriad of "Can't remember the name of this book but it was about a girl and evil guy...." type posts.

>48 bernsad:

I think this would be a good job for administrators.

>47 AndreasJ: How is combination going to work? Admin fiat? Something like tag combination, where users can propose and vote on combinations?

Well, I think I'm defeated, so the answer is: It won't!

>42 timspalding: we're going to redesign the initial-posting page

Can you please prevent non-staff posting to New Features?

>51 r.orrison: Do you mean start topics? I agree only staff should be starting topics there, but members should be allowed to post to those topics.

>52 amanda4242: Yes, that's exactly what I meant. Thanks!

>45 timspalding: "I do feel strongly that flaggers is pretty lame as a group." my poor flaggers group, insulted and abandoned. I'm staggered it's lasted anywhere near this long. I think I created it just after the introduction of flagging when there was a lot (some) of mis-use and lack of understanding about what and when reviews could be flagged. Given it never made it onto any of the Group main pages the only people who'd find it were those in that discussion or when I remembered to link to it in Talk. Taggers (https://www.librarything.com/groups/taggers - not mine) is even less active.

I used to really enjoy Groups and would spend a while now and then perusing the latest ones and joining where appropriate. I never visit the group home pages though, and just navigate through 'Your groups and posts' feature. I've been less active on talk for a while now and haven't checked for ages. I suspect most of my 100 odd groups are now dorment.

As I see it, LT has always had a terrible help system. With the wiki-help being difficult for users to find let alone edit. Most of us struggle even to put mark-up in posts. I would create a 'Helper Groups' subsection at the top of the groups page, link the help directly to that and then let the groups affiliate in as specific as they wish.

>20 timspalding: I disagree that users seeing 2016 will think it dead. They look at topics. We've had 11, 12 year old threads resurrected for new comments and discussion.

>55 gilroy: I think most new members don't notice the dates at all.

I have a question, to >1 timspalding: and all:

Are changes for changes' sake a good thing?

I'm of the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" mindset.

I like the ability to go back to some of the older topics/posts that have helped me to understand how to use LT. I don't post, so it may not show up as being active.

Earlier this year I discovered the Newbery Challenge. It hadn't been posted in for a couple years, but I created a challenge thread and others have since posted in it as well. Some have been updating their challenges that were started 7 or 8 years ago! How said it would be if that group had just disappeared. At some point someone would recreate it, so for what purpose should it be removed totally?

>54 reading_fox:

With the wiki-help being difficult for users to find let alone edit.

It's horrid. It's basically impossible to find things there, information is scattered over multiple pages, and no one (well, almost no one) even knows it exists.

>57 fuzzi: No, as you can read in Tim's later posts, he's mostly afraid that potential new members are thinking LibraryThing is dead or dying because they see Groups full of very old topics. That's why he wants fewer groups with more (aggregated) activity, rather than many specialised groups with less activity.

>57 fuzzi: >51 r.orrison: Can you please prevent non-staff posting to New Features?

This is a good idea.

I used to really enjoy Groups and would spend a while now and then perusing the latest ones and joining where appropriate. I never visit the group home pages though, and just navigate through 'Your groups and posts' feature.

Right. This is part of what we're trying to fix.

>60 timspalding: But that may just be that the Groups page did what it should and that older members don’t use it the same way as newer members. I do appreciate that tab and find the my groups list on the right column much easier to use than the paragraph type cluster on my profile page. Not broke, don’t fix.

>60 timspalding: "fix"

??

Not-broken
What should the group home page be used for other than new members investigating a group?
Groups and posts works very well as is.

Will there be a mechanism for asking for archived groups to be revivified?

>60 timspalding: prevent non-staff posting to New Features This is a good idea
I can't take credit for the idea... it or some form of it has been mentioned repeatedly in RSI, as early as 2008: https://www.librarything.com/topic/38898#648596

>64 r.orrison:

Oh, I know. It's an irritant.

I agree, please leave curation related groups for individual items separate

>51 r.orrison:

prevent non-staff posting to New Features

I'm on another site that has that. In their Announcements forum, only staff can start a thread, but anyone can respond. It works well.

>55 gilroy: >57 fuzzi: >63 2wonderY:

I'm concerned about the archiving of dormant groups.

What does 'archiving' mean here? They're dead and gone? completely inaccessible?

I don't think that's such a good idea. As has been pointed out there can be much good material in dormant groups, and those groups are not infrequently revived.

At least some distinction should be made between the dormant group from 2009 that only ever had 3 members and 2 topics, and the dormant group that thrived from 2010 to 2017, had 41 members, but then faded in the last few years.

And I agree it would be good if there were some mechanism for reviving archived groups when the need arises.

On the other hand, my 'Group suggestions' include

2014 Category Challenge
75 Books Challenge for 2017

The inclusion of such groups makes that feature less than useful. If this takes at least the archived groups out it would be a big help.

Whoops, sorry, that first group had a message added in June.

>40 amanda4242:
>45 timspalding:
>50 timspalding:

I've become much more sympathetic to combining the helper groups after reading this thread.

The main concern people appear to have is losing the ability to ignore the helper topics they aren't interested in - maybe you could have categories within the group and create an ability for members to mute/ignore certain categories? An alternative might be to create a super-group where people could join and see all the various helper sub-group content; I suppose to create posts in such a super-group you'd have to select a topic or sub-group.

I mentioned this in the combiners thread, but I think the biggest benefit of a combined helpers' group would be for new or infrequent helpers. Finding the right information when it's spread out between five or seven groups might be challenging for newbies; maybe the initial question is about series, but they won't encounter information about CK or combining works that would be relevant to them.

There are also topics where I'm not sure where to discuss them, such as work-to-work relationships - it can pop up in relation to combining or series, but it can also be something that doesn't really fit any of the helper groups as they are currently described.

Okay, I think you may have bludgeoned me into submission!

Count me as anti-bludgeoning.

I think having the separate groups works pretty well without having to invent a whole super-group and/or sub-group architecture. If someone wants to subscribe to all the helper groups at once, we could just make sure that they are grouped together on the Groups tab.

Okay, so pondering all this, I'd have to ask how this whole "Supergroup" idea would work.

Would it be a group, with the ability to make subgroups beneath? or just a connector for the various groups to one search hit?
Would a pin in a subgroup be available to all subgroups? Or would that pin only be for that subgroup?
Would posts in the main group be moveable to a subgroup? Would a post in the subgroup be moveable to the main group? Would a post be able to be moved among subgroups?

I'd think, if they do get combined, all the primary threads that are used to bring attention to specific issues would need pinning to the top. Not saying I'd want them all combined.

RE The Flagger Group: Actually it does sit as a specific use. There are still instances of improper flagging that we post in the flagger group to counter. Or question if a flag is proper. Sure it may seem disconnected but that does work for many people. And not all of what's flagged is Spam.

Maybe combining the two and renaming the combined group to Database Protection and Cleaning might be better? /sarcasm

Please give *somebody* the ability to move Name That Book threads to Name That Book, at least!! :P

There are a lot of groups where most of the activity takes place in one thread (not just the helper groups) - that's been a part of how Talk culture developed from the beginning. It's part of most forum cultures. I'm not sure it's a problem that can be solved. I'm not sure it's a problem at all. On the one hand, some of those groups could probably be folded in as a standing thread in a larger group. On the other hand, if you're in a group with a constantly-updated offtopic "standing" thread that you truly do not care about, it gets very annoying to have that thread constantly at the top of your Talk page, and not everybody uses the "ignore" function.

A lot of forums have some version of "sticky" threads, where those kind of standing threads can be marked as special by a moderator and pinned to the top of the forum. So, for example, the current "Please fix this book" and "why I voted No" threads could be pinned to the top of the Combiners! group page. If they were pinned to the top and marked as special threads in some way, in an otherwise slow group it would make it more obvious to somebody wandering by the group page why nearly all the activity was in one thread, and it would also make it easier to find those threads in a busier group. (They would still behave as usual in Talk.)

As for the helper groups - I would love if we had a general LibraryThing Helpers group that covered flagging, combining, spam, CK, tagging, Coverguess, the wikis, etc. in the "Standing and Official Groups" section. It would make it a lot easier for newer users to know how to ask for help on those things, and it would be a better place for staff to take part in discussions about helpers or make helper-specific announcements. I don't think that would require getting rid of the existing groups, though, and the official group could point people to them as well. You could have an official combined group, easy to find and watched by staff, and still have the existing unofficial groups for each topic bubble along.

On the "archiving" - I think it's great to archive old groups, we don't need ten-year-old groups hanging around, but I would really like more than a year's leeway. There have in the past been some groups related to yearly events that only had activity once a year, and while they would probably make it in under the wire, I feel like 18 months or 2 years would be nicer, especially since we've still got dormancy as well. It's also not that odd for someone to gafiate for a year or so and still want to come back and not find the locks changed behind them.

Or if you want to keep the 1-year limit, could you at least give the creator the ability to un-archive an archived group by posting to it? (I have some old groups I would have posted to wake them up if I knew this was coming! Which is probably why you didn't give us any warning...)

So, if we're going to talk about combining groups, there's another avenue to look at as well.

There's a series of groups being created to talk about mystery novels - they're all prefaced with "Book Discussion", and then the title of the book. New book, new group. They appear to be rather tightly curated, from what I can tell, with the group creator starting all threads and forcing them into a particular order. (I'm not a mystery reader, so I've never participated.) Presumably there's a lot of overlap from group to group. Whenever a new one is created, Talk is flooded with rather unfriendly-looking topic tiles like "3P", and I need to go ignore yet another group. Some sort of "super-group" would go a long way toward cleaning this up.

Also, add me to the chorus who's disgruntled about the "your group is now archived forever and irretrievable, surprise!" announcement.

Edited to add:

I do think that archiving is a good idea. I think a year, with no advance notice, is too strict. As Crypto-Willobie said, there's a difference between a group with two members and five posts from 2010 and one that was going for years with dozens or hundreds of members which quietly petered out.

Oh, look, someone posted a new thread in Flaggers!

So where, exactly, are posts in archived groups going to be visible?

I mean, I post threads for my individual reading in Club Read, which starts a new group for each year. I star them so I can keep track of them, because sometimes I want to go back and re-read what I had to say about a book I read in, say, 2015. Will I still see those when I bring up my starred posts on my talk page? And if I don't, where do I have to go to look for them? They're not just all going to disappear, right? ...Right?

I also have times when I want to see my Category Challenge threads, especially the older ones. I don't want to post in them, but I do want to be able to occasionally consult them.

>76 bragan: I do that, too, go back and check my reading threads from years past.

>76 bragan: At least for now, posts in archived groups seem to still show as usual in Talk (including starred, and in My Posts), you just can't post to them.

Example:

"Booksellers" group -- working in bookstores, anecdotes, experiences, new trends, legendary stores, store closings, whatnot.

Active from 2006 to 2019. 128 members. Over 2 dozen topics.
But now archived. Does it make sense that we are supposed to set up a SECOND more or less identical group if we want to continue these same conversations?

http://www.librarything.com/groups/booksellers

As I indicated from the start, archived groups are not gone. They are searchable. But they cannot be posted to.

But now archived. Does it make sense that we are supposed to set up a SECOND more or less identical group if we want to continue these same conversations?

Yes, because the new group will have someone who cares enough to open it and promote it generally. Or if it doesn't, then the conversation will go into Book talk or some other place where many people might see it. Posting to a long-dead group gets you access to long-dead users, no admin and no prospects for a real revival.

>81 timspalding: There's a lot of assumptions in those statements.

>81 timspalding:

"As I indicated from the start, archived groups are not gone. They are searchable. But they cannot be posted to."
Yeah, I misread and thought you were planning to archive, didn't realize they already been archived. Now I see, sorry about that. But I don't see any assurance in the original post that they were still searchable, hence some of my concern.

I suppose I could start a new "Bookstores and Booksellers group and offer a link to the old Booksellers group in the first post. But that seems like going a long way around the fence just to get to where you already are. And Book Talk? seems to me mostly an undifferentiated mass..

timspalding (#81):

Posting to a long-dead group gets you access to long-dead users, no admin and no prospects for a real revival.

So, let's unpack that.

long-dead

Is a year "long-dead"?

long-dead users

Are groups that have not been posted to for twelve months necessarily "dead" because all the users have died (or, less grimly, left the site), or has it just been a natural attrition in conversation that could be bumped by newcomers?

no admin

Admins on LT don't have any special powers anyway, so that's neither here nor there, but let's look at whether archived groups have creators who are inactive.

no prospects for a real revival.

I'm flummoxed as to how you think a group that already has dozens or hundreds of members watching it has worse prospects than one with zero.

Let's look at a few examples, shall we?

Crypto-Willobie cites "Booksellers" with 128 members:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/booksellers

For the past few years, it puttered along at a thread a year or so. That's not going to keep anyone checking back *just* for that group, but if people have it in their Groups, they'll see threads when they do crop up.

Looking at names for the last poster in each thread, I see several names I recognize as active LT users. The group creator last added books in late September 2020, so is presumably still around.

From my own Groups, I see "Flash-Mob Catalogers" with 71 members:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/flashmobcataloging

Obviously, no activity here for the past eight months; prior to that, it was also at about a topic a year. This is by nature a bursty group. Does it really make sense to start nonce groups every time a flash-mob-cataloging project comes up, rather than have one place to collect the requests?

I recognize names here too, though less so. The creator is ablachly.

Teetering on the brink of oblivion is "Mathematics" with 498 members, last posted to in November 2019:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/mathematics

(I'll probably go bump something to revive that group after this post.)

Again, recognizable names in Talk, a still-active group creator, and an existing readership base ready and waiting if the group is revived. Also, a clear and meaningful group name, and easily accessible history! If it gets archived, someone will need to create a new group with a less-ideal name, go message the members of the old group to see if they're interested, and have links back to the old threads ready. Why create all that work when you don't have to?

Again, I'm not necessarily opposed to the notion of archiving groups - I just think this threshold, especially with no advance warning, is way too strict. Archive groups with no posts for five years, or which never had more than ten members or two posts, or something, if you need to clean stuff up. Something like https://www.librarything.com/groups/recommendationsfunct (nine members and four threads, all from November 2010) can be safely archived. But not "Mathematics".

Just for the record. I've been trying to revive https://www.librarything.com/groups/fiberarts. It hasn't worked. You are welcome to archive it.

>84 lorax:
"I'm flummoxed as to how you think a group that already has dozens or hundreds of members watching it has worse prospects than one with zero."

Very much this. I've got a few dormant groups on my list. If one or more people were to try to pump some life into them with an interesting post or two, I might join in. If someone were to start a new "replacement" group I just wouldn't notice.

>85 MarthaJeanne: Ooh, that sounded like a neat group! I’m a member of the Needleworks group which is moderately active and has nice and friendly members, you’re welcome to join us there if you want people to talk to about sewing, embroidery, knitting, etc.

Considering how "two weeks" in LT admin time is roughly equal to two years, one year does not seem like a long time.

>80 Crypto-Willobie: I feel I should have posted in Booksellers instead of Gay and Lesbian Bookstores last week. Then y'all would still have posting access in that group.

I agree with >84 lorax:.

Groups such as "Mathematics" are highly unlikely ever to gather 500 members AGAIN from scratch. Because--this factor doesn't seem to have been taken in account (I think I did mention it above)--Talk activity has gone down overall and has been going down steadily through the years, including the largest and most active such as the Folio Society group.

Presumably that is--overall, and most of all--the effect of other social media displacing old habits. Whatever the case may be, the type of interaction provided by Talk is not, at this time, as popular as it used to be, and is likely to decrease further.

Now, is it likely that creating a new math group would somehow energise the subject so much that this new group would be and REMAIN active?

Frankly I don't know but I also don't know why that would be easier to do than reviving the old group.

Is it certain that more eyeballs would be drawn to the new group than posting in the old one, with hundreds of listed members (and probably some watchers)?

As I said, given the trajectory of overall Talk activity, I'd bet on a firm "no", "quite the contrary".

>87 PawsforThought: Once I am participating in a group I might join. But I won't join before I am participating. If groups want to be Join to post, fine, but it isn't very welcoming.

I would have thought that the cut off for archiving would be more like two years rather than one.

>81 timspalding: It sounds like one of the hidden goals here might actually be to push more topics into Book Talk, the kind that can support a couple of active threads a year but not a highly active group. I think that could be a good goal. With social activity dropping overall, it can help to have less splintering of the existing activity, and if certain topics do get a lot of traction in Book Talk, then people could discuss starting single-topic groups for them.

But if you would like more use of Book Talk for general/single-topic book discussion, you need to make it so that less than 2/3 of the posts in Book Talk are misaimed Name That Book posts. Book Talk is basically unwatchable, has been for a long time. I know you are saying you plan to do things to fix that. Please do them! Then we can see how that changes the way Talk is used.

From the list of my groups, those that got archived but I think would be better to revive than start anew:

1. Ancient China -- 184 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/ancientchina

2. Doctor Who -- 318 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/doctorwho

3. Iris Murdoch Readers -- 38 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/irismurdochreaders

See, this is a perfect example of a group that just needs to hang around forever. Yes, it's small, and maybe half a dozen or so people actively discussed there at the same time, but it housed the best, most detailed discussions of Murdoch's work. If a new Murdoch fan or anyone with a question about her popped up now, would they ever get close to recreating,or just pulling together those people and that interest again? And what if they wanted to comment on the past discussions?

And another illustration of the negative effects of indiscriminate archiving--I just revived a "Dormant" group, Italians-Italiani. It has more than 600 members. An Italian coming to the site might notice the group isn't very active, but it's there--a lot of people seem to join just to signal belonging, or in case they need to ask something etc.That is, they are not joining because they necessarily want to chat at that moment.

But if such a person sees that a group with 600+ has been archived, that you can't post in it, how is that going to feel anything other than inhibiting?

Yes, I know, they are supposed to click on the message and go read the Wiki and then venture into either submitting a request to the staff to revive the group, or make a new one. Just a string of hurdles.

In sum, seems to me that the criteria for archiving need a serious rethink.

So, social activity is not dropping in the last few years. It's obviously off from 2008, but it's holding steady now. Obviously we're trying to get it up. It's one reason we're redoing Talk.

Fragmentation, however, is a very real problem. We have a certain amount of butter here, but we're spreading it on more and more slices. If someone comes to LT, finds a small group and posts there, it will get no replies. They will conclude LT is dead, whereas in fact people are talking—just not there! Dead groups from 2008 or 2013 do not help anyone. They absolutely hurt the site.

In theory, having a group hang arounds means it could be revived at some point. But a dead group is also a kind of warning to anyone interested in starting a group on a topic--someone else has this topic, not you. And it's dead.

If you'd like, I can do a study of group revivals. I don't think they are very common at all.

Sites have to weed old content. Groups are not some external fixture of the universe. It's been years—often a decade—since a lot of the groups in question were active. They should no more be clogging LibraryThing up than we should be importing dead Usenet groups that relate to books.

Apologies for the serial posting, just to finish the survey of the archived groups on my page. Couple more examples of groups with subjects that, IMO, makes no sense to leave to potential "recreators" (i.e. would be better revived):

Japanese Culture -- 758 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/japaneseculture

Middle Eastern Literature -- 214 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/arabicnorthafricanan

Question: is there a reason why archiving would be better than dormancy for groups like these?

>94 timspalding:

Let's say I want to start a Japanese group in LibraryThing. I'm excited. But I search and I see there's already a group. Maybe it's what I want or more likely I'd angle the group a little differently. Either way, I'm not going to do anything. The group won't be mine, and it won't be different, and it's clearly dead so why would I bother?

As for Middle Eastern Literature, it's six years since anyone posted to that. People HAVE posted about middle eastern literature since then—they've just done it in living groups. (I've posted about it—but not in that group!) This is fortunate, because if they had posted in that group, it wouldn't have gone anywhere.

In short, dead wood and audience fragmentation are problems. If there's another solution to those problems, I'm all ears. If you don't think dead wood and fragmentation are problems, you're missing something important.

While I think the idea of archiving inactive groups is a good one, I think there should have been more warning before this was implemented; even just a banner announcement would have been good.

Some things I would like to see:

Some indication in the list of my groups about which are archived or dormant.

A section in the groups tab showing which groups are soon to be archived. Maybe sorted by number of threads/posts, as a group that was once very active probably has more chance of becoming active again.

A way for group admins to archive. Members of yearly challenge groups, for example, might want the option to archive the previous year's group early.

timspalding (#94):

It's been years—often a decade—since a lot of the groups in question were active.

I don't think anyone is questioning archiving *those*, or the concept of archiving.

The question is about where you draw the line. Many of us feel that a year, without notice, was too draconian. But you're obviously not willing to budge on this, so I'm not going to waste further time trying to convince you that a group with 500 members and a most-recent post in September of 2019 is different from one with nine members and a most-recent post in 2010.

While I think the idea of archiving inactive groups is a good one, I think there should have been more warning before this was implemented; even just a banner announcement would have been good.

I'd be happy to open them up again. Heck, we'll do it when we release new talk. But then we need a simple policy—X months and a group is dormant, X and it's archived.

As to the rest, yes. All true.

The question is about where you draw the line. Many of us feel that a year, without notice, was too draconian. But you're obviously not willing to budge on this, so I'm not going to waste further time trying to convince you that a group with 500 members and a most-recent post in September of 2019 is different from one with nine members and a most-recent post in 2010.

No, I'm willing to budge. We can open them up again and everyone can do what they like. But then we need a simple policy—X months and a group is dormant, X and it's archived.

Another approach, btw, would be to put such groups "up for grabs." If an admin isn't around any more, the group should lose its admin. And then someone new can pick it up. That, however, … well, I worry about the process.

Not "mine"?

I'm sure not going to participate in a group run by anyone who throws a hissy fit because someone else had the idea to start a "Japanese Culture" group first, and will stomp their feet and just not say anything if they didn't get to create the group. It's that sort of entitlement you want to reward, by rapid cycling through groups, forcing them into ever-more-obscure names and continuously saying "Well, we had a lengthy thread about exactly this topic two years ago, but it's in the locked group, so you can't easily find it and definitely can't respond to it?")

>101 lorax:

Buy-in is important to any social endeavor. People start groups in part because they want to talk about a topic. They're excited. A dead group with an absent moderator is the opposite of that—it repels conversation before it can start. Or consider the tilt people put on groups. The framing of the first person to make a group related to some topic shouldn't forever dominate, even after the group has died. At some point a group needs to die, and if someone wants to start something similar later, great.

>99 timspalding: Three months for dormancy and eighteen months for archiving seems reasonable to me.

Also, were you scrapping the idea of group combining completely or just for combing the helpers groups? Because I can see where members of two or more small groups with overlapping interests might want to join together to create a more robust group, and it would be nice to have a system in place for this to happen.

One year for dormancy and three years for archiving.

(Sec)

>100 timspalding: I think most people on this thread agree with the principle that archiving groups is a good idea.

I think if you made it 24 months before the group is archived, most of us would be happy. (Strike that, we crossed while posting. Thank you for the change!)
If you made it 24 months for less than 24 members and 24 total posts, five years or more for groups that had ever been active in some way, nearly all of us would be happy.
If you made it 24 months, with a notification to the admin/members a month in advance that they need to post something if they want their group to stay open, I think nearly all of us would also be happy.

A way to switch admins if the admin is out of contact would be nice, but you're right, it's very tricky socially. At minimum, a way for a current admin to transfer ownership to someone else/add a second admin themself would be useful, and be much less risky in process. (Though really only worthwhile if admins have powers of some kind.)

An option for an admin to merge their group with another, with permission of that group's admin, instead of letting it go to archived status, would be great, too, even if it just moved posts and notified members without merging membership. I think I'd be happier seeing my dormant book discussion groups' threads merged into Book Talk than completely locked forever. That would free up the name of the old group, too, if someone later wanted to recreate it from scratch.

>94 timspalding: It looks like your definition of a dead group is one in which a new post won't get a response. If so, then the length of time since the last post is the wrong criteria. If a group has active members or watchers then one of them will see the post and might respond.

A better criteria would be the number of active members. I suggest that you only archive groups that have not had a new post in 2 years and have no members who have joined or are watching it. An active member would be one who has read any posts in the last 3 months.

Okay, I have de-archived every group.

When New Groups comes out, we will give everyone a week to revive old groups, and then institute a system of archiving.

I believe the answer is to archive after 12 or 18 months.

An option for an admin to merge their group with another, with permission of that group's admin, instead of letting it go to archived status, would be great, too, even if it just moved posts and notified members without merging membership. I think I'd be happier seeing my dormant book discussion groups' threads merged into Book Talk than completely locked forever. That would free up the name of the old group, too, if someone later wanted to recreate it from scratch.

I think we should allow members to propose suggested successors. These can then be suggested to members of the old group.

>105 timspalding:

Dry wine?

>92 melannen: you need to make it so that less than 2/3 of the posts in Book Talk are misaimed Name That Book posts. Book Talk is basically unwatchable

I click the Ignore X on those as soon as they appear, which makes them just a minor nuisance and keeps the group eminently watchable.

>105 timspalding:

I would think combining groups would be a good way of encouraging more conversation, especially among lower-engagement groups.

The framing of the first person to make a group related to some topic shouldn't forever dominate, even after the group has died. At some point a group needs to die, and if someone wants to start something similar later, great.

If you could combine a new group with an old dormant or archived group, you might get the benefits of both initial enthusiasm and access to members who at some point were interested in the subject. That might really help get a new group going. And if someone starting a new group (with a new slant or emphasis) doesn't want to combine it with the old one, well, they don't have to.

I'm not sure how much developer/admin time you want to spend on this, but I'd think the best way of going about it would be just to have a talk thread in Recommend Site Improvements or wherever where people can request, suggest and discuss group combinations.

Another big thing for the new group/talk structure I'd worry about is the accessibility/discoverability of new groups - right now Talk is way more convenient for me, but it also means I really don't happen upon groups I'm not already aware of, and I suspect I'm far from the only one.

>106 melannen: Admins can be replaced, either if the old admin is gone and the group members agree OR if the current admin asks to be replaced. It just takes clear agreement in the group, and staff are happy to make the change.

>96 timspalding: The way this reads, honestly, is EXACTLY how we got so many fragmented groups In The First Place!
People came in, found a group, weren't happy with how certain people talked, then created their own. Or felt it didn't fit their needs. Or they wanted a different angle. (See the most recent Terry Pratchett group creation for just this problem.)

If you look at the number of just FANTASY generic groups, I'm sure you'll find five or six, most dead, because some people in the Original Fantasy Fans group weren't as ... open to ideas ... as they hoped, when that group was at its height.

In fact, I'd suggest merging multiple groups with the same subject matter (Fantasy groups, Author specific groups.) If you want to reduce the slices we're spreading on, don't allow so many to create duplicate.

My other suggestion: Author specific groups should go dormant and STOP. Authors cycle through fans. Just because someone hasn't posted in that group in over a year, that doesn't mean they aren't gaining and losing fans regularly. Shoot, look at Harry Potter alone. It's cycling through fans like water right now, as new people discover the books and others argue over the author's political stance.

You want a suggested timeline?

18 months to go dormant.
36 months to archive GENERIC groups. (Meaning they have a LARGE overarching theme.)
Specific groups to Authors, Books, or Written Worlds (And this could be both fiction or nonfiction) -- Dormant ONLY.

>102 timspalding:

Buy-in is important to any social endeavor.

Yes.

And if I'm already a member of a longtime but low-traffic group, I'm not going to buy-in to a group created by someone with exactly the same interest who refuses to participate in the existing group because they don't own it.

>114 gilroy: What I have seen is a lot of people joining, not knowing how to look for an existing group, starting a new group, but not bothering to post even once, and being disappointed that the group didn't get off the ground.

I think it has to be a little harder to start a group, at least making sure that whoever starts the group realizes that they have to work at it.

>94 timspalding: I agree that fragmentation is a problem, but I don't think encouraging people to start new groups instead of reviving old ones is a solution. New groups rarely get off the ground - most of them die fairly quickly.

I'd be interested to know how often new groups are started that get and stay active (aside from those that are the same group started new every year e.g. 75 book challenge)

>116 MarthaJeanne: I've experienced both ways.

I even looked at all the writer specific groups that exist on LT and found some were formed because people didn't find an existing group so created new. Or they joined a group, then weren't happy with the discussion so formed new. Or in some cases, to be a direct and polar opposite to an existing group.

I know new Harry Potter groups cropped up because they didn't understand that the primary group was called the Hogwarts Express - so naming and tagging also didn't help when they didn't search.

Which is also why I am okay with merging a lot of similar themed groups. Just debating my list of suggestions right now.

>117 norabelle414: The second column of the newest groups shows new groups from Late April to mid June.

Four are book discussions of an active group of members. These tend to be very active for a limited period of time.

Another three have ongoing discussion.

This is out of a total of 24 groups.

>114 gilroy: Rather than have different standards for different types of groups (and have the trouble of deciding which type a group might be), wouldn't it be easier to have a bump thread like the one in The Diogenes Club for groups with sporadic activity? It would save a group from going dormant, and if people don't care enough about the group to even take the time to write "bump" every couple of months then it's not much of a loss to see it archived.

>96 timspalding: Quote "In short, dead wood and audience fragmentation are problems. If there's another solution to those problems, I'm all ears."

Combining groups? Is there a reason not to combine two groups about Midddle Eastern literature? It would gather all members interested in the topic without the need for those in archived one to actively search for a new one.

I'm coming from my own perspective on such groups. I've joined quite a number of groups not particularly active because the topic is of interest to me and if some discussion takes place, I want to see it. (I don't watch the general talk, there's too many reading challenge and other threads I have no interest in, so I'm always following 'your groups') Contrary to your perception, I wasn't discouraged by no recent activity. I guess that I don't expect people to discuss say Faulkner so often that the group is busy. I expect it to be a place where those who want to discuss him at some point post because it gathers others interested in his work. In the few years I've been a member, it had two bursts of activity. I myself haven't posted, but I enjoyed reading the discussion and I like the fact that there's a long-standing group with enough members where I can post once I get around to picking up another one of his books. That's what I expect from groups on specialized topics.

I very much agree with lorax that 'a year of inactivity' alone is not a good criteria for archiving. In particular, groups with considerable membership should be considered with some other criteria in mind too and either given more leeway or combined with another one if there's one on the same topic.

Two that could be combined:

"Cookbook Collectors": http://www.librarything.com/groups/cookbookcollectors is dormant.

"Cookbookers": http://www.librarything.com/groups/cookbookers is active.

Oddly, they were created within just a few months of each other.

>120 amanda4242: Because I feel some groups deserve to remain non-archived?

Recommended for Combining:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/writerreaders (Active group)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/writersonlt (Dormant - 23 members, 2 threads)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/thewriters (Dormant - 47 members, 9 threads)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/readerswhowrite (Dormant - 71 members, 7 threads)

>123 gilroy: I understand that, but if you truly believe a group is worth keeping on the active list then isn't it worth going in once every few months to bump?

Any more to combine groups is going to raise a fuss. I think we'll need a voting process for it.

Regarding the discouraging effect of dead groups, it seems to me that if I want to discuss Mongolian parlour games or whatever, it's going to be a whole lot more discouraging if the existing group is officially labelled as "dormant" or "archived" than if it's merely inactive.

>127 AndreasJ: Good point. What does the "dormant" label do? Why is it there?

>127 AndreasJ: What's your favourite Mongolian parlour game? Does it involve a sheep's head?

>130 AndreasJ:

Skull pyramids. It's all about the skull pyramids.

I think a new(!) group formed to invite proposals for group combining and voting on it is a good idea. Of course there will be some resistance but the alternative, you resisters, is the locking-down of (possibly, probably) both groups.

We could also try to contact the admins of combo-candidates, and if there are none reachable or interested, put the combined group up for "sale" (probably by posting on the new combined group where it would reach a max on interested parties). I would be willing to do at least some of the admin canvassing gruntwork.

Here's one:
Fairy Tale Readers
Fairy Tales Retold
I vote yes, combine. Yeah slightly different focus in places but also some overlap. That can all be worked out with different threads within the group.
Both admins appear to be long gone. I'd offer the admin to fairy tale maven 'malineblue'.

>131 Crypto-Willobie:

http://www.librarything.com/groups/fairytalesretold
http://www.librarything.com/groups/fairytalereaders

Both admins appear to be long gone. I'd offer the admin to fairy tale maven 'malineblue'.

Aside from the issue of whether those should be combined (I'm not convinced), I wonder if they need an admin. And that's true of a great many, if not most, of the groups here. Sure, someone has to start the group, and that person is the admin by default, but what does an admin really do?

>132 lilithcat:

"the issue of whether those should be combined (I'm not convinced)"
I agree they're not perfect matches. But there is overlap. But as I pointed out, the alternative is exile for both. And I think the differences can be worked out with different threads within the group.

"what does an admin really do?"
A little janitorial work?
Settle a dispute now and then? Call out a troublemaker?
Petition the site admins when necessary?
Change the heading illustrations now and again?

>134 Crypto-Willobie: One of the things a good admin does is keep a few topics active. This at least keeps the group visible and encourages others to post. The person doing this does not need to be the official admin, but a group without such a person won't stay active.

Here's a Modest (er, ah, Radical) Proposal...

Twelve groups, all due for archiving. All having to do with Celtic, Irish or Welsh literature, language or culture -- you can see their names at the end of each url. Under our old norms most or all of these would be kept separate -- there are overlaps but there many differences of emphasis etcetc. King Arthur wasn't a druid and he wasn't studying Gaeilge.

BUT... if we were to combine these twelve into a mega-group called, oh, "Celtic Matters: Irish, Welsh, Breton, Celtic Mythology Etc" (or some other excessively long title of your choice) and make the subject matter of each old group the subject of its own dedicated thread within the mega-group... well, the inaugural Welcome to Celtic Matters message would reach perhaps 300 conceivably-interested users. (Very rough figures, trying to take into account both overlapping and lapsed members.) And from those dedicated threads other related threads would grow,perhaps using a connective thread-identifier in their titles (e.g., Druids: King Arthur: Learning Irish: etc).

http://www.librarything.com/groups/fromavalontotirnanog 79

http://www.librarything.com/groups/irishcelticstudies 163

http://www.librarything.com/groups/irishmythology 29

http://www.librarything.com/groups/druidry 43

http://www.librarything.com/groups/welshlearners 28

http://www.librarything.com/groups/welshtranslationofli 11

http://www.librarything.com/groups/anglowelshliterature 7

http://www.librarything.com/groups/irishlibrarythinger 217

http://www.librarything.com/groups/gaeilge 26

http://www.librarything.com/groups/irishlit 31

http://www.librarything.com/groups/librarythinginirish 3

http://www.librarything.com/groups/arthurianlegends 233

It would take a certain amount of work, which is why I recommend setting up a voting work-group/thread. And it would take a certain amount of trust and open-minded shedding of group boundary prejudices. But the alternative is that all these groups will become frozen in the LT past. Yeah, some of them will be replaced by pale imitations which will be evermore difficult to sustain, and then those will disappear into exile. What's to lose?

I'm thinking this one could be nicely incorporated into "Comics"

Everything Illustration and Comic Art! --150 members, last post in 2015

https://www.librarything.com/groups/everythingillustrati

Looks like a natural for "Happy Heathens"

Skeptics and Rationalists -- 53 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/skepticsandrationali

Several dormant French-language groups that seem very similar:

Vaillantes-- 9 members:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/vaillantes

En français --388 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/enfrance

French Connection--468 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/frenchconnection

Francophiles--88 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/francophiles

And three French-language Helpers-type groups that perhaps would be logical to combine? Note that two dealt with helping build LT, the third with helping users. However, given that all fell dormant for so long...

LibraryThing en français --68 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/librarythinginfrench

Bibliochose : promotion de Librarything en français -- 49 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/bibliochosepromotion

Aide en français --31 members

https://www.librarything.com/groups/aideenfranais

>136 Crypto-Willobie: Why do you want to combine the Arthurian Legends group with the others? Certainly it is very possible to be interested in Arthur without any interest of the other groups you have listed there.

In general, if several dormant groups are combined, that isn't going to make the new group active.

>141 MarthaJeanne: Yes, Arthuriana is more connected with Medieval England and Medieval Romance than with Celtic stuff, despite its origins. But apart from that group I think combining matters Celtic into one "fluff" group and one "hard" group would be a good idea, one about languages and history and one about druids etc. Oh, LibraryThing in Irish doesn't belong there unless we combine all "in native language" groups into groups for interested foreigners. Otherwise that sounds tantamount to saying that Irish is just a pastime for people interested in Mabinogion and Irish pubs, and not a working medium of communication.

>141 MarthaJeanne: >142 anglemark:

Well, that's why I'm presenting it only as a proposal for discussion and voting.

I admit that Arthurian is the last one I added to the list and is more of a stretch.

"In general, if several dormant groups are combined, that isn't going to make the new group active."
I can't prove what may or may not happen but I think there's a real possibility that it would. If several hundred users were made aware of a new Celtic Matters group many might have something to contribute to one thread or another. Maybe not. But maybe.

Is there any benefit new groups having to meet a membership threshold within a time period to try and eliminate those that are solo vanity projects? To save them hanging around with 1 member and no or very few posts

Something like within x weeks of creation there has to be a thread posted, within y weeks a minimum number of members (set low, but not just the originator).

>143 Crypto-Willobie: Generally, I think combining groups has a lot of potential, and I see no reason why eight dormant groups wouldn't make one active group.

>144 Helenliz: There is no real reason why there need to be other members. But if even the originator isn't posting, the group isn't going anywhere.

If the originator has some reason to want to post at semi-regular intervals that isn't spam, I don't see the problem.

A lot of school groups start off with a few posts and half a dozen or so members, and don't seem to do anything after the first week.
https://www.librarything.com/groups/mrgarnersbookclub
has only the teacher, no posts. Started May 2
https://www.librarything.com/groups/chaskalibrarysummerr
only the originator, no posts June 8.

Tim mentioned upthread something about creating a primary group and subgroups. Maybe what we're looking at with the suggestions some have proposed is a type of set up like that.

Celtic Matters as the primary group, with each of the existing groups made as a sub.
Does it resurrect them? Nope. But it brings things together to allow better discovery.

Perhaps that's part of the whole problem. Discovery.

Group -> subgroup would be ok but would require structural tweaking, programming, no?

That's why I suggested Dedicated Threads within a Group -- structurally similar but requiring no programming at all.

>144 Helenliz: Since groups with fewer than 2 members are already against the TOS, it does seem like it would be easy enough to give a deadline of a couple months for a group to recruit members and then automatically archive/remove it. And that would probably clear out a lot of the low-hanging fruit, *without* having to let them hang around as empty clutter for years, and without touching groups that have a history.

(It might also help to mention this on the "start a group" page with advice on how to recruit more members.)

How long does it take to revive a group from dormancy? I had assumed it was immediate but this dormant group got new posts a couple hours ago and is still marked as dormant: https://www.librarything.com/groups/usedbooks

>150 norabelle414: I assumed it took a day.

>150 norabelle414: "note that it may take a few hours for a group to move back to active status"

https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/HelpThing:Dormant_groups

>150 norabelle414: revival has been slower since groups went from archived back to the dormant status. I'm not sure the dormancy notice has disappeared for any revived group since Wednesday.

>149 melannen: Good point! That might help, as a starting place.

>144 Helenliz: >149 melannen: The only thing that worries me about this plan is now we get group advertising spam, just so they can get their second/third member.

However, to just outright kill those groups that went dormant without the minimum I'd be okay with.
(I'd even have one group I created killed, so that tells you I'm not holding onto anything from sentiment reasons.)

There are lots of dormant groups suddenly popping up in talk. Means I ignore them just in case they really do take off again.

Another Proposal for combination:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/gamers (Active - 214 members)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/magicthegathering (Dormant - 10 members)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/roleplayers (Dormant -148 members)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/thedicetable (Dormant - 16 members)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/whitewolfroleplayer (Dormant - 32 members)

I was tempted to make the roleplaying groups their own and keep the two separate, but to be honest, they were all dormant so I didn't see the point.)

Groups I've created that I'm okay with Archiving/dying:

https://www.librarything.com/groups/archersparadox (6 members, 5 threads, no activity in 10 years)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/nflamericanfootball (1 member, 3 threads, no activity in 2 years -- and if it isn't active right now with NFL Season under way, it's not going to be active.)
https://www.librarything.com/groups/weberverse1 (1 member, 1 thread, No activity since created in 2011)

>157 gilroy: There's also: https://www.librarything.com/groups/boardgamegeeks (Dormant - 55 members)

>157 gilroy:, >159 anglemark::

I would keep roleplaying game groups separate from board game groups and CCG Groups. While there is some overlap (I play primarily RPGs and board games, and used to play CCGs), I feel there's enough difference to warrant keeping them separated.

I would suggest combining the various dormant games groups into 4 meta groups:

Roleplaying Games
Board Games
Collectible Card Games
Computer Games

>160 Maddz: I would like to agree, but I think we would end up with four dormant groups. In this case, I'm happy to share the group with people playing types of games that don't interest me.

So I think pure combination isn't going to happen. Rather, I think we need a way to point archived groups to newer ones. Presumably this would be a system of proposing a forward and then voting for it. These forward pointers would then appear on the group pages, and also inform the suggested groups feature.

So all this discussion was for nothing--large old groups get archived and no one can post in them, but get directed to some hypothetical new groups that may or may not ever exist, with maybe one or maybe more members, but likely just a fraction of the old groups' membership?

How is that supposed to revitalise Talk and not deaden it even more?

I think you are wrong to treat every group's subject as the same. To me the whole constellation of groups is best thought of as a sort of encyclopedia of interests, with different frequencies of "consultation". You don't need to share, care about or visit every entry at the same rate but they nonetheless belong to the encyclopedia.

>162 timspalding: I also don't see how this forwarding is going to result in a viable new group unless you somehow forward the membership of the old group to the new one.

I am much more in favor of combining old groups together than directing them toward new groups.

The point of groups isn't just to post new topics, it's also to find discussions that have already been started. I think there's a real benefit to connecting people who were in different groups about similar subjects, while still letting people search or browse that group for discussions that have already started. I think it will have a much greater chance of becoming a lively, useful group than trying to start from a completely new group.

>165 norabelle414: I completely agree.

I must say I don't see why combining groups that would otherwise be archived would be controversial in any way. For all intents and purposes, that is their only option of remaining alive. The admin would not have anything to administer anyway and the members can unfollow the new group if they don't feel like following it for whatever reason. OTOH, the rest of the members would still have access to the original group discussions, as well as the benefit of established membership to address with their posts

Actually, I think being catapulted into a group I had not decided myself to join would be enough for me to immediately ignore it.

>165 norabelle414:
>167 MarthaJeanne:
Hear, hear!

>166 SandraArdnas: >167 MarthaJeanne: People generally feel better about being where they've agreed to be than with where they're forced to go.

What we've seen lately is that sitewide changes to groups (as well as other major areas of LT) can happen without warning. It's not unbased to think that if one VIP's opinion changes again, then many of us would suddenly discover we're in groups we had not agreed to join/watch. We might have previously decided not to be members of the more active or general groups for reasons that weren't considered before combinations.

I also think the first example of what might be combined (further) undermined trust. The helper groups help with maintaining this site every day. How those groups were presented as nearly useless as is was a shock intensifed by the initial responses by LT helpers. Then there's disagreement with how to compare groups.

Who knows what would be combined into what? That would likely be a surprise.

It's pretty easy to unjoin a group. Single click.

And if combined groups are formed, each former/potential member should get a notification as to the existence of the new-form group. And then they can stay or flee...

I fail to see how combining say two Faulkner groups, as well as their membership, is controversial. I probably should have specified 'm referring strictly to groups clearly on the same topic. Those where combining them itself is disputable is another matter entirely.

>171 SandraArdnas: I think "clearly on the same topic" may be the issue . . .

Years of discussions about combining (or not) similar-seeming tags have -- my perception; others' mileage may vary -- highlighted the profound extent to which one person's "clearly the same" is another's "separated by a critical shade of difference." I mostly lurk, rather than participating, in discussions of tag-combining because my own instincts are significantly out-of-sync with the "sense of the room."

Tags and groups are, to be sure, very different animals, and the rules for group combination could be written more liberally than those for tag combination. Still, I can see "combine" or "leave separate" proposals that some regard as obvious appearing incomprehensible or misguided to others . . . thus, controversial.

>172 ABVR: Yes, I agree with all, but at the same time this is very much different in that we're talking about groups that would be archived. So the primary issue is whether combining and thus keeping the discussions in one place and available for comment in the future is desirable or not.

The repercussions of combining groups are not site-wide like with tags either. There are also far fewer groups than tags and it's perfectly conceivable to discuss combinations on a case by case basis. The vast majority of groups to be archived are a non-issue. They had few members and few posts and those of us who argue in favor of combining are referring to groups with more members and more significant history of discussions.

Anyway, one way or another, I have to deal with the problem. The system makes group creation very easy, and groups never die. After fifteen years, the result is a lot of dead groups.

Clearly the status quo is the least controversial option. A majority might favor combination, but some apparently take it as tyranny. Even archiving groups that haven't had posts in years is controversial.

Anyway, we'll go live with a new Talk interface Monday or Tuesday. Groups will follow a week or two later, with luck. I'll put more thought in how to change nothing while improving everything.

>174 timspalding: The system makes group creation very easy, and groups never die.

Maybe make it harder to start groups.

It would also help if similar groups could somehow be shown together so people who are looking for a certain type of group can easily find what they're looking for, rather than getting frustrated searching and starting a new one. I know there's the option to see groups by tags, but that tag cloud isn't very friendly looking--and not all groups are well tagged.

>174 timspalding: just a few thoughts--

Maybe more LT members would less resistant to change if more of us understood why dormant groups are a problem... agreed with the reasoning of why problems that interfere daily with our use of the site are lower priorities than problems that seem to have rarely gotten in the way... and if we'll continue to be told updates work "great" when they're more problematic than before... among other recent statements that deny active members' perspectives.

Anyway, thanks for the warning this time. May the transition to the Talk interface go smoothly for nearly everyone.

>174 timspalding: The system makes group creation very easy, and groups never die.

So the suggestion to have a test on a group to see if it should survive might make that a little less of an issue. There are some recently created groups that don't even have a post by their creator. If they ca't be bothered to post to it within a certain timeframe, it is clearly never going to get off the ground, so why not kill it early?

Similarly a group with only one member isn't a group.

It's like pricking out seedlings to let the plants that will thrive do so.

Many groups have a definite end date.

Most of the popular challenge groups are for a specific year. There may be a bit of clean up the following January, but that's it. (Why does the group suggester think I might want to join the 2014 Category Challenge?)

Group read groups are very busy for the month or two it takes to discuss the book. After that, there isn't much point in posting there, as the 'group' has moved on.

>178 MarthaJeanne: That is where a 'proper' forum type structure would come in.

In that case, the forum would be 'Annual Category Challenges' or 'Group Reads'. In the former, you would have a sub-forum for Year, and under that, Category, then the individual posts. The latter would have a sub-forum for each title and threads for discussion, spoilers and the like. (I don't participate in either sort of group, so instead of umpteen groups to ignore each year, there's only a single forum to ignore.)

Anyway, what do I know. Personally, I'd be happy with a better Talk structure so I didn't have to hunt for a group/topic which posts rarely but is active (like the 'We Will Miss Them' thread), or a better design for Bug Collectors or RSI, so it's easier to see if something has been reported or requested previously. Not everyone is good at searching - they may not even know the 'correct' terms to use.

Just had a run through the test groups created. Of the last 20 groups, 12 have no posts at all. Not even by their creator. Until the creator has posted, no one else can join or post to the group,* so these are completely redundant. 7 of these are more than a month old. That would be a quick way to reduce dormant groups, get rid of those that never even start.

Of the rest, a further 2 have only 1 members and 1 post.

group/created/members/posts
My test group 08-Oct-20 1 0
WTFolklore Reading Club 05-Oct-20 2 1
Book Discussion : The Skeleton Room by Kate Ellis 25-Sep-20 4 lots
What We're Reading: Hispanic/Latinx Heritage Month 24-Sep-20 1 0
Quantum Philosophy - The Era Of Consciousness Evolution 22-Sep-20 1 1
Rialto Readers 21-Sep-20 1 0
Neil Gaiman Collectors 18-Sep-20 1 0
Collecting Discworld and Pratchett 18-Sep-20 7 1
El Código de Hammurabi 15-Sep-20 1 0
Book Discussion : Lost Girls by Angela Marsons 09-Sep-20 5 lots
American Academy Brno Library 04-Sep-20 1 0
Chasing Rainbows 29-Aug-20 1 1
Librotour 25-Aug-20 1 0
hackNY 19-Aug-20 1 0
EDE 3233 14-Aug-20 1 0
Room 15 Library 06-Aug-20 1 0
UWM Sois Children's Lit Course 04-Aug-20 1 0
Wickis Buecherchallenge 28-Jul-20 4 1
Book Discussion : The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly 22-Jul-20 5 lots
NYT Best Sellers 17-Jul-20 1 0

*my mistake.

>180 Helenliz: Book Discussion : The Concrete Blonde by Michael Connelly 22-Jul-20 5 lots

But look at that group
https://www.librarything.com/groups/bookdiscussionthecon

Lots, but finishing on August 2. For such groups, an option to archive when the group purpose is done would be useful.

>181 MarthaJeanne: agreed, there are multiple ways that groups can reach the end of its useful life.
Tim seems to be only looking at the end of life scenario, I'm trying to make the point that considering a threshold to a groups continued existence may well be a profitable route forward.

It might be worth including a question when you start a group about how long you anticipate the life of the group to be.

An option for group creators to self-archive their group at the end of its natural, limited lifespan could also be useful, though I suppose there could be problems with admins nuking their own group to spite a subset of users or something similar,

>180 Helenliz:

Until the creator has posted, no one else can join or post to the group,

That's not accurate.

It is indeed possible to join a group even if the creator has not posted. If you look at the upper right of, for example, Rialto Readers: http://www.librarything.com/groups/rialtoreaders you'll see the option to "Join this Group".

timspalding (#174):

No, *irrevocably* archiving groups that have not had posts in *one year*, with no prior warning, was controversial. If you'd said "Anything with no posts in five years will be archived, but can be revived by messaging staff" I think there would have been very few complaints.

Again, it's not the principle of archiving groups that's the problematic bit for most, it's the overreach in the implementation.

>185 lilithcat: You're right, I missed that.
Even so, a group that even the creator has not posted to can surely be said to be redundant.

>167 MarthaJeanne: I think that's fine? You would be leaving a group that had not had posts in several years so you can't have been too attached to it.

>174 timspalding: I think it should be much more difficult to create groups. Some ideas:
1) no one who has never posted in Talk before should be able to create a group
2) groups can only be created after x amount of time since the member joined LT (a month?)
3) redirect the user to an information or warning page (e.g. "are you sure there isn't already a group for this?") if this is the first group they've ever created

>188 norabelle414:

no one who has never posted in Talk before should be able to create a group

I don't agree with that. There are some groups created for classroom use, library use, and the like, and I don't see why the teacher or librarian creating the group should be required to post randomly in some other group first.

>189 lilithcat:

Right.

My suggestions for groups:

No one can create a group in the first 24 hours after joining LT.

No one can create a group until they have at least one book cataloged. This will show that they might have at least a vague notion about LT's main function.

Creators must enter at least one descriptive tag for their group.

Groups with zero posts within one week of creation should be killed. Who's going to want to join a group if the creator can't even be bothered to post there?

Groups that haven't gained a second member after a month should be killed. A one person group isn't a group, it's a blog.

Suggestion:

On the "Start a group" page, under "Are there any limits?", add (in BIG BOLD LETTERS): "You may not start a group to promote your book/blog/podcast. Such groups are considered commercial spam and will be flagged and deleted."

>186 lorax: thank you.

I see there are a number of people revisiting their less active groups to make 'rescue' posts.

(Trying again.)

Seeing the new layout in the middle of the old layout of the home page looks . . . Weird.

I suspect as well as intentional "rescues" people are visiting their old groups and thus interacting with old threads they missed the first time around.