Secret Private Groups
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@nadnerB said:
It goes against the ML tag line about being an open community... Unless that disappeared from the front page. I can't tell from my phone.
It did. With persona there isn't a blurb box on the homepage anymore.
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@nadnerB said:
Semantics aside, I disagree with private groups here.
It goes against the ML tag line about being an open community... Unless that disappeared from the front page. I can't tell from my phone.That's a bit of the concern. But the thought is, and maybe this is wrong, that this particular use of the private groups is only using the technology and is not actually a "part of the community." It's semantics, you are correct. But the behaviour is to only use the technology for a non-community use.
The alternative is to run a separate community platform to do the same thing, which would technically make it not ML, but would actually not change anything. It would still be the same people, the same communications and the same privacy. So, in a way, you could say it is only semantics that makes using Skype currently for the separate conversation not a part of the same community.
I guess one of the key questions is, what makes the private groups part of or not a part of the community? Is it that they are running in the same NodeBB instance? Is it that they run on the same database? The same database farm? The same operating system? The same cloud provider? At which point in the technology stack does it remain a problem and at what point is it a "separate" thing?
These are legitimate questions I've been asking because I'm not sure where it really matters and where the perception matters.
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Look at it another way, if we were using NodeBB's hosted product and made two communities (made them as different customers, from different companies) it would be two communities on the same hosts and databases and code. So I'm sure that would be seen as okay.
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And the IMs are private now. I assume that the one on one privacy is not considered a concern?
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Well that sucks. Now it's hard to prove my point
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<cranky oldman voice>
"back in my day mangolassi had a box on their home page that clearly defined what they were about"</cranky oldman voice> -
So, for me, the challenge is trying to think about what makes some private groups obviously wrong and some seem like they are fine when, at the technology level, I can't make them into different things.
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Because if we don't have the private groups here, they will (and do) exist anyway. That's the biggest challenge. That people have conversations in private is going to happen no matter what. The question really is.... should they do it on this technology platform for certain cases, or should they not?
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Absolutely - bring those private groups here for the stated purposes. The last thing anyone should want is the requirement to log into dozens of different sites when they are all controlled by the same people.
This is the problem I was mentioning in a different thread (I think). The primary group has around 100 subgroups and each of those subgroups have their own website/forum. This makes staying up to date with all of them a HUGE pain. If they all flew under one flag, one forum - sure it would be HUGE but it would be easier ultimately.
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I see your point and I'm glad that this level of thought is going into it. Although I am still not 100% on board with the idea it is something for me to think about.
Obviously the decision is not mine and I'll still be here regardless. -
@Dashrender said:
This is the problem I was mentioning in a different thread (I think). The primary group has around 100 subgroups and each of those subgroups have their own website/forum. This makes staying up to date with all of them a HUGE pain. If they all flew under one flag, one forum - sure it would be HUGE but it would be easier ultimately.
Subgroups are something I fear. We have that at Gamrhaus and it makes a little more sense there but is still a nightmare and was probably a bad idea (and maybe we should collapse them.)
We've tried really hard to have some logical groups here that are few and make sense and don't overlap.
One of the interesting things with the private groups is that they can be temporary and archived by having a "hidden" top level "archive" group and when a group is done with its purpose it can be moved there so that posting stops but so that people who need to view the content still have a means of reaching it. But the clutter goes away as the group effectively becomes invisible, even to its own users.
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You're right Scott - managing subgroups can be a huge pain. But the alternative of dumping everything, even though it's related can make things completely unusable.
Example.
My Star Wars group has about 100 subgroups around the world (www.501st.com for those that don't know). If we all used the same forum, and under that forum used the same subgroup just for upcoming gatherings, there would be at least 100 active threads at any one time. Since most displays show between 15 and 20 threads at a time, that would take a lot of scrolling to find your specific thread.
But if we create a subgroup for each of those 100 units, then under that create another subgroup for gatherings, that list is now down to 3-10 active threads at a time. Much more manageable.
If you are going to find yourself in a location belonging to anther group, you just find that unit in the subgroups, then find their gatherings sub-subgroup and post about your interest.
Currently with each unit having it's own website/forum, you have to find that site, then create a logon, then wait while it's authenticated (I've seen it take months - yeah that's sad), then find the gatherings area.. etc.. what a pain.
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@Dashrender would tagging not have fixed that? Have a tag for the location, type of interest, time period, group name or whatever is appropriate?
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Thank you for all your input everyone. This is something Scott and I have discussed many times. If we decided to keep these private areas open (right now it's more for testing the functionality than anything else) it will have been a very thought out decision.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender would tagging not have fixed that? Have a tag for the location, type of interest, time period, group name or whatever is appropriate?
So you search by tags? I suppose that could work, I've never used tags as a way to find something before, heck I have barely ever #tagged something before... but then again i hardly use things like Twitter or anything else that uses tags (yeah I know FB supports Tags, but I never understood how they worked).
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@Dashrender said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender would tagging not have fixed that? Have a tag for the location, type of interest, time period, group name or whatever is appropriate?
So you search by tags? I suppose that could work, I've never used tags as a way to find something before, heck I have barely ever #tagged something before... but then again i hardly use things like Twitter or anything else that uses tags (yeah I know FB supports Tags, but I never understood how they worked).
Go to the tag page and try it out. This is the modern taxonomic approach to using metadata to make threads categorized without requiring a strict hierarchy. @andyw and I did a lot of research on this stuff years ago after building the world's more complex, herarchical medical facility management system and finding out that the nature of a hospital was that it could not be put into a hierarchy, it just doesn't work that way.
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That totally makes sense. Today so many postings, or just information itself does not seem to fit within a small little box of hierarchy so I can definitely see how this could help.
Does the user have to choose to tag these key words, or are they picked up automatically? If it's a manual process, how did you get physician buy-in to choose the needed tags?
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@Dashrender on ML, you can add tags at topic creation (or edit)
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@Dashrender said:
Does the user have to choose to tag these key words, or are they picked up automatically? If it's a manual process, how did you get physician buy-in to choose the needed tags?
Hopefully with practice people tag well, just by spending time thinking about it and watching other people and attempting to use tags themselves. But, in reality, the mods do a lot of manual tag additions and modifications.
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Can someone TL;DR this all for me?
How does one join a secret private group plotting to take over the world?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Does the user have to choose to tag these key words, or are they picked up automatically? If it's a manual process, how did you get physician buy-in to choose the needed tags?
Hopefully with practice people tag well, just by spending time thinking about it and watching other people and attempting to use tags themselves. But, in reality, the mods do a lot of manual tag additions and modifications.
Mods tagging work well in a paid forum, and might even work well in a free one where the mods really enjoy that sort of thing.. and there is constant turn over in the mod (because I have to think that would get old pretty quickly).
