Right now social groups is an experiment... depending on how it goes, they may stay the same, they might change somehow or they may go away completely. As we see how it goes rules for them might change as well, so check this thread. A few beginning rules for you... Must be English Do not use them to spam Do not start threads in the normal area of the forum promoting your social group (you can link to them in your signature, but don't start threads about it or PM spam people about it).
Will most likely add some sort of auto-deletion process down the road for inactive groups people created.
I started a thread on groups a day back.Eventually the thread was closed... Sorry for breaking the rules...
That is very good Shawn, once again another great idea. I quite like them, and have created one or two for the higher ranked members. ~ Mike
Due to "Social Groups" the DP is now becoming a Social networking site. Just like orkut, Facebook, etc. The friend adding facility is adding advantage to it. I think there must be limit (in number) for each member for forming new group. Else there will be millions and billions of groups here on DP.
IMO it is sort of pointless. Do they serve any actual point to the forum? They may keep some of the crap out of the main forums, but how long until it just turns into a spam-fest?
IMO the social groups are totally "pointless" I have disabled them on my forum. I don't see any benefit of them at all.
Seriously , Social groups facility is useless [IMHO], Just increasing in DB, n nothing else. I think we should take one pole on this.
Well as Shawn said, its totally experimental and this this DP after all, so I think its worth giving a shot here. It does feel fun having that feature on DP.
Good rules, but social groups are meant to be for fun and offcource not spam, atleast dp members have something besides all that serious talking on forums.. possibly you must remove groups on same topic as there's multiple groups with same topic going on now.
Just made a Proxy group Since the groups could almost function like their own 'forums', it would be a lot better than that 1 big thread in the Business Forum.
There have been some very good points made above and i agree that it will increase the database size but they is inevitable. The forums constantly grow, and as such so does the database. Either way, as Shawn stated... This is experimental and i think that we shall all see how things go with these Social Groups. ~ Mike
Joined a few. Don't know why. I join and never visit them... Would be nice to be able to give reputation to users for posts made in them though.
Give it some time. As usual, the people decide what they're into and what not. From what I see, having subnetworks has been very successful and looking at Ning for example, it proves to me that people feel a need to have their own little world and surround themselves with those they want to discuss common interests with. The only problem I see is that one group for example has been "invite only" and the initiator got banned, so those groups are going to be a waste of space.