Missing: Social Groups + Group-forums

[erich37]

XenForo is great as it is, but I think one of the Core-Features which are still missing are some sort of "Groups" so that users can associate themselves to certain Groups.

Maybe also having Group-Forums for each of those Groups ?

For example, XING.com is using Group-Forums (public or invitation-based), which can be applied for by moderators to "run" a certain Group, so people can set-up their own Group-Forum based on their interest and they can invite already existing members or people who are not yet members of your website to join this specific Group.

So this would be free viral-marketing for your very own Forum.

Also see this suggestion:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-replace-members-page-with.2773/

 

[Elizabeth]

Do they have to be called Social Groups? Could they be called something else? After all, vb calls the Social Groups , we want to be different. Maybe Communities? And have a place in your profile to list any communities you own/join? 

 

[dieketzer]

people tend to dismiss features they wont use out of fear they will add 'bloat' to the codebase.

The problem with vB's Social Groups was little to no visibility. New discussions appear in groups you belong to? You will only find out by crawling back through each of your Groups via the poor interface to check. Due to this design I have seen very few vB groups take off (at all).

Regardless, why are people fighting against a feature? That's crazy stuff. Just because YOU don't want it doesn't mean it isn't useful for others.

 

[erich37]

Do they have to be called Social Groups? Could they be called something else? After all, vb calls the Social Groups , we want to be different. Maybe Communities? And have a place in your profile to list any communities you own/join?

usually those are called "Groups", not "Social Groups", so people will associate themselves to certain "Groups" as they do in real life.

In the end those would be some sort of "Interest Groups", "Local Groups", etc.

As we all know, having a huge amount of Forums and Sub-forums is not great.
Having "Groups" will also give you the advantage of being able to decrease the amount of Forums and Sub-Forums at your main Forum-page (Forum-List).

So you could have general (generic) categories (topics) at your main Forum, but people will still be able to gather around their area of interest as they would associate themselves to Groups.

So by having "Groups", you do not need to build a huge number of Sub-Forum-Categories, as you are building a secondary hierarchy-layer (structure) with said Groups.

 

[darkon]

I´m not generaly against groups, the concept is nice (and really badly done in vB).
But the problem i see, there are only two ends of the story.
1. people ignore the groups, so you have another feature that´s bloating up the usercp without offering much
2. people start using the groups a lot and the normal forums are getting emptier and emptier

That´s just the experience i have with numerous boards, as an admin and as an user.

So i think group-forums should really be an addon.

 

[feldon30]

Why should i want a forum inside the forum?
People should use the public boards to the benefit of ALL members, and not only a selected group. If you want discuss something in privat do it with private conversation.

I think people get frustrated on forums and wish for an "inner circle" where there is less BS, less strong personalities, and less jerks.

Of course this goes back to forum moderation. If people feel like they need to pull away from the main forum and form their own group, then the forum may not be moderated heavily enough. But you can't moderate so tightly to make everyone "comfortable" because I find everyone gets fed up with all your rules and leaves!

 

[Elizabeth]

Of course this goes back to forum moderation. If people feel like they need to pull away from the main forum and form their own group, then the forum may not be moderated heavily enough. But you can't moderate so tightly to make everyone "comfortable" because I find everyone gets fed up with all your rules and leaves!

There is a fine line between too much and "the inmates are running the asylum".  
Liz 

 

[feldon30]

I've been to both extremes on the same forum.

 

[erich37]

I´m not generaly against groups, the concept is nice (and really badly done in vB).
But the problem i see, there are only two ends of the story.
1. people ignore the groups, so you have another feature that´s bloating up the usercp without offering much
2. people start using the groups a lot and the normal forums are getting emptier and emptier

That´s just the experience i have with numerous boards, as an admin and as an user.

So i think group-forums should really be an addon.

I agree, having BOTH a normal main-Forum and also Group-Forums at ONE website would just confuse your users.

Either having a main-Forum or Group-Forums, but not both at the same time at one website-installation.

Maybe M+K can build in an option in order to select which way we want to run our website:
- a main-Forum
- Group-Forums

So let´s wait and see what will happen after the first XF-release and whether Groups will be added after all.

 

[darkon]

Of course this goes back to forum moderation. If people feel like they need to pull away from the main forum and form their own group, then the forum may not be moderated heavily enough.

I wouldn´t blame only forum-moderation for this.
Of course this can happen (my last project started because me and some friends got frustrated on another board when the administration allowed memberbashing, if it came from some of the admins personal friends) but i would say that´s not the regular case.

In most cases its just that people who share some more personal interessts than just the boards topic are likely to stick together and building a group for themselfes, where "outsiders" are not welcome.

But thats just my experience, i guess everybody will have their own

 

[Elizabeth]

Well, most will either build groups on your forum or go elsewhere...like yahoo to build a subgroup of like minded people.

Would you rather they stay there or go off the forum altogether? 

 

[Waddy]

people tend to dismiss features they wont use out of fear they will add 'bloat' to the codebase.

Yep, which is why I think you would get less resistance if this was developed as an add-on. I have no problem with groups, where people can join groups and show allegiance, but I wouldn't want private fully featured group forums, especially if the members controlled access to those forums.

Well, most will either build groups on your forum or go elsewhere...like yahoo to build a subgroup of like minded people.

Would you rather they stay there or go off the forum altogether?

I think this really depends on the subject of your forum, and for all the inane social conversations, yes, I would rather they were done on a site geared toward social networking.

 

[ismael33]

I´m not generaly against groups, the concept is nice (and really badly done in vB).
But the problem i see, there are only two ends of the story.
1. people ignore the groups, so you have another feature that´s bloating up the usercp without offering much
2. people start using the groups a lot and the normal forums are getting emptier and emptier

That´s just the experience i have with numerous boards, as an admin and as an user.

So i think group-forums should really be an addon.

+1

My experience with groups is negative. I've disabled them from my forum for the 2nd reason. And if you allow users to create private groups this can became in a groups war.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

The only groups that I find work are the ones that were in jomsocial for joomla. Mainly because they were sitting in your userstream every time you posted. I have a lot of very interesting content posted in them.

The ones in VB however were buried under too many menus (same as blogs) and so because you don't constantly look at them it means that you forget about them and makes using them completely pointless. I have just checked my current site (it took me five minutes to find the groups lol) and then only one person has posted in there in a year - ironically, it was yesterday. How Odd!

 

[Alpha1]

The only groups that I find work are the ones that were in jomsocial for joomla. Mainly because they were sitting in your userstream every time you posted. I have a lot of very interesting content posted in them.

Can you explain more about JomSocial Groups? I do not find much info on their site.

 

[The Geek]

people tend to dismiss features they wont use out of fear they will add 'bloat' to the codebase.

Let the developers manage bloat levels. Let the users give feedback on results.

I like how everyone puts in their perspective, I just don't like the back seat developers. Member feedback and predictions are very useful while "X feature is useless and sucks. Only focus on forums or I will kill kittens" isn't.

 

[Crazyfruitbat]

Can you explain more about JomSocial Groups? I do not find much info on their site.

So with jomsocial the first thing you see on a front page is a stream of users actions like facebook, and people can post directly to the stream but all main static information gets put into the groups - which kind of feels a little like an underdeveloped flickr group. People can either have conversations in those groups as separate conversations and get email notified on updates and the stream also gets updated which in turn lets everyone know that these social groups exist - which is the key. Telling people they exist!

 

[Alice]

Do they have to be called Social Groups? Could they be called something else? After all, vb calls the Social Groups , we want to be different. Maybe Communities? And have a place in your profile to list any communities you own/join?

A new name for them does appeal to me too, not entirely sure what though, something obvious and recognisable but quite new at the same time, Clubs keeps sounding out to me, but somehow it seems familiar to forums, hmmmm, have to think on this, any ideas anyone?

 

[Alpha1]

The name 'Groups' is not exactly new:
http://groups.google.com
http://groups.yahoo .com
http://www.youtube.com/group
http://groups.drupal.org/
http://groups.icq.com/groups/
http://groups.myspace.com/
And off-course Usenet Newsgroups.

It makes as much sense to rename it, as it would to rename blog, gallery, CMS or Forum.

 

[dutchbb]

XenForo is great as it is, but I think one of the Core-Features which are still missing are some sort of "Groups" so that users can associate themselves to certain Groups.

Maybe also having Group-Forums for each of those Groups ?

For example, XING.com is using Group-Forums (public or invitation-based), which can be applied for by moderators to "run" a certain Group, so people can set-up their own Group-Forum based on their interest and they can invite already existing members or people who are not yet members of your website to join this specific Group.

So this would be free viral-marketing for your very own Forum.

Also see this suggestion:
http://xenforo.com/community/threads/suggestion-replace-members-page-with.2773/

We've tried it on our forum, and people are creating groups, but they all die shortly after. It doesn't work and I don't think it will ever work.

IMO this is not something XF devs should waste their precious time on. There are lots of other things that are needed and those are things that have proven they do work in most communities (photo gallery, cms, reviews...)

 

[Alpha1]

We've tried it on our forum, and people are creating groups, but they all die shortly after. It doesn't work and I don't think it will ever work.

The sites I linked above are proof that they do work and are a popular application on the internet. vbulletin groups are really not a good example of groups and the fact that vb groups doesn't work, says nothing about the function an sich.

If you agree that Forums are the result of newsgroup / usenet its popularity, then this very site would not exist, if groups where no popular function.

Remember when vb blog was released and it was non-functional and new blog entries where buried far inside vbulletin? Many where stating that blog doesnt work. Wordpress simply disproves that and now that new content in vbulletin blog is more visible, not many make the same statement. It will be exactly the same for Groups if new group content is visible and if functions actually work.