Social Groups

[Rayne]

As you may know by now, the clubs forum will be migrated into the Social Groups function in the near future.

If you have not seen what they do already, give it a peek and fiddle around with it. See what you like and what you don't.

>>Social Groups

Every group is designed to act as its own subforum, allowing each group to make its own threads.
The creator of the group has loose control over the access of members and can edit and tailor
the group to fit the needs of its members.
As far as I'm aware, basic functions such as posting images, links and spoilers all work just fine now.

If there is something you dislike about the social groups, explain why. Is the layout not fitting your taste? Do the links take you to where you want to go? Do you see what you expected? If there is something you feel they lack, what improvements do you suggest be made to improve their function?

If you have an argument for the Clubs staying, explain what you most like about them that makes them more convenient for use over the social groups and please say something other than "that's just the way it is and always has been."

Your comments are greatly appreciated in helping make this place beneficial to everyone.

 

[Nekusagi]

Voted in favor of the clubs forum.

See my posts in the notice thread for my opinion on this issue.

 

[Ino-Chan]

I haven't used them in awhile. And I really only want to use them along with the clubs.

 

[Evil Raichu]

I'm in favor of keeping the clubs forum. If it changes to social groups, then my time on bulbagarden will probably drop 30% or something. I'm not going to use them, because I don't like them.

The clubs forum is easy to find and more convenient to post in. Even if you fix up the social groups to post pictures, etc., it still seems out of the way for someone like me who has been posting in the club forum since she joined 5 years ago. D:<

Having to use the social groups is kind of like travelling across country and taking all the shitty little backroads to get to your destination instead of just taking the freeway like everyone else. You can revamp them all you like, but it still seems like a major inconvenience. Just because other websites are using social groups doesn't mean we should have to.

This, and most of the other reasons people gave in the notice thread.

The Team Rocket club thread, I like it very much, and you're not going to do much to it without me kicking and screaming at you. I'm sorry, but I don't want to use the social groups.

 

[Musashi]

I find the clubs easier to use as well, and I don't think they really need all the bells and whistles of the social groups.

Take the Team Rocket Club for example, a lot of times we just post and comment on pictures. While uploading is fine, we wouldn't really get a chance to make any comments on them, and I can't see anyone making a thread for something like that.

I also think it might hurt discussion since people may not find a certain thread topic interesting, but if it was in one thread like we have now people kinda have to look through every post and they might find something to add.

There also doesn't seem to be enough traffic in most of the clubs to make this worthwhile. I think just having one thread that's easy to find works the best.

 

[Archaic]

Voted in favor of the clubs forum.

See my posts in the notice thread for my opinion on this issue.

Copy paste them here Neku, make life easier for us. I don't want to have to trawl through multiple threads to find things, especially when the final replacement of the clubs forum is still a way down the track.

 

[Nekusagi]

I find it ironic you're asking me to make a change to make life easier for you.

Copied and pasted from all my posts in the "Notice" thread:

Archaic, I also disagree with this.

What's the harm in club threads? A lot of threads have been here for years, and I don't see any reason to ditch them now. And Blackjack is right about the social groups. For one, you can't post pictures or links in Social Group posts. A lot of clubs quite frequently are used for posting art, links, etc.

Honestly, I don't see what the problem with club threads is. Unless you have a good reason for archiving them (and if so, please do share,) there's really no reason to get rid of them.

EDIT: I tried posting a URL. It doesn't work.

However, it DOES at SPPf. Can you at least fix the social groups to allow posting of images/URLs/file upload?

Archaic, maybe the club members just like things the old fashioned way. You're facing opposition, so isn't that reason enough?

Honestly, I don't see the harm of keeping the club THREADS. Hell, we could even merge them into games and have Fun, Clubs, and Games like we used to.

1: What is everyone's problem with the idea of migrating to social groups? Just the hassle of having to move over initially? The fact that it was sprung on you suddenly?

2: What do you feel that you'd actually be losing by going to social groups over the existing individual club threads?
1: Both.

2: The fact new members can just stumble across the club threads and join from there. And just the ease of use.

Honestly, practically everyone else is in opposition to this. Why do you keep insisting on pushing it on us, Archaic?

Four or five disagreeing with one. I don't see anyone here defending Archaic's decision, then things might be different.

I messed around with the social groups today and they're a pain to navigate. The forum was so much easier. Just click on the page when it comes up in my subscribed threads, or navigate to the forum and find the thread. Easy.

 

[Mooites]

I dont mind them, but the clubs have so much history. You can go back and find old pictures, posts, whatever. Social groups arent bad, but clubs just seem more fun.

And the Ash club was so close! we only needed 40-ish more pages to 1000!

 

[Archaic]

Just for the record, the clubs threads will still be there, they'll just be archived.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

My thoughts, from the other thread:

I vehemently disagree with this move.

People don't use the social groups because they're clunky, badly formatted, not easily linked, you can't upload any files to there, and you have to jump though hoops to get anything accomplished.

People use the clubs because they're convienant--just like the entire rest of the forum. Why have something that's so incredibly far removed from the rest of the forum? Why in the world would we want to move?

It's worked swimmingly for years and years, then when social groups were added, hardly anyone went over there. If people actually liked them or thought them worthwhile, that would have been different, but there's hardly any activity over there at all.

Hell, if anything, get rid of social groups. No one will miss them.

(that was up to date when I wrote it, bear in mind. However this one I just wrote

Archaic, rather than us being "lazy" and "afraid of change" because we don't want social groups to take over clubs, we're viewing you as being "if it CAN change it MUST change!" without any regard to what the people want.

Being able to upload to a group vs uploading to a specific post--that's a VERY big difference just in that. Given that most picture uploads are relavant to the post in question, or at least the time the post is made (ie, after a new episode airs), it's vitally important to have the pictures displayed in the actual post. And sure we *could* upload and link, but why create such a hassle? Why make it so different than what we can do in every other part of this board?

People don't use social groups because they're clunky and so very much unlike the rest of the forum. Why should we visit this forum to have to post somewhere that feels like an exception rather than a streamline? Again, why should these have such a dramatically different layout/feel/working than everywhere else on the site? There's no reason to make these things seem like outsiders, but that's inherent in the social groups function. However, clubs work like everything else.

You seem to just want them because they're shiny and (relatively) new, but honestly, there's no reason at all to change them.

Additionally, you're not helping your case by accusing clubs fans of being lazy or afraid of change. We're giving very valid reasons--and yes, "if it's not broke, don't fix it" IS very valid in a situation like this, yet you dismiss it because you personally don't agree with it.

 

[Lethal Carnivine]

Hmm, Perhaps this whole idea could work, if the trouble of accesing it was eliminated.

For example, when you go into the categories and such, they are a bit too....ambigious. If you could have a small description of each, than that could make it better.

I also don't know why you didn't keep the social groups as before with the posts already on the onset instead of clicking through another link. That's just a pet peeve of mine.

Overall, good idea, but make it far less clunky and more accesible.

I wonder if anyone realizes(I just realized this) that if you join a group, you have it on your visitor page? So click those links and go there. Of course, joining these clubs still present the issues already stated.

the whole page ordering and page linking thing still stands. I'm wondering if some groups could take off that new discussion thread? It seems a bit...cluttered for a general group such as TR. For example with TR naturally, we'd want to talk about the game version, special version, anime version so on and so forth. Is it really necessary for some groups to add a discussion topic for each thing and thus make the forums cluttered? Which sorta leads back to my first point with the cateogorizing.

I'd suggest you put something like this for a drop down: Team Rocket(dropdown), anime, special, video game. Then you click whichever one you want and go to corresponding club. That would mean that some groups would make different versions of the same club(in order to prevent clutter).

Sorry if I sound a bit disjointed.

 

[Snake Bandage]

I'm never going to use social groups. They're simply a bitch to find. Also, from experience in other boards, they're uncomfortable to use. I like things the way they are.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Another problem with social groups--you have to join them to post in them, as opposed to clubs where you can just drop in a line and then leave forever.

Again, WHY make it so dramatically different from the rest of the site? You don't have to subscribe to threads to post in them, so why make this such a hassle?

 

[betagold]

I use them, but they could use plenty of improvements. I'm in favor of keeping the clubs forum, by the way.

 

[Æsahættr]

Some particular Club threads are on topics to specific to be taken to its own subforum; the content gets spread too thin. Take, for instance, the Doctor Who Social Group I made when the change was first announced. One thread and 5 messages in over a month.

Some topics just won't work as Social Groups. For some, a specific thread is all that is needed.

 

[Blackjack Gabbiani]

Another thing is that you can't skip to the last page/post on social groups--you have to go to the first page then go down and hit "last page". It's small, but it's very strange and wastes load on a page you don't want to see because you've seen it a million times before.

 

[Axle Helios]

I'm in favour of Socila Groups, *shot* because it makes it so much eaiser to have multiple conversations going, although, they do need to be improved so they look more like a normal thread, instead of the bare minimum. Plus, they need to be subscribable, instead of having to check in the social group.