I realize I am probably going to open a group can o' worms but when I look at the groups, I noticed so many are very old - not touched in over a year. So I want to put this out there to all of you. I would love to have Groups be a more meaningful space that helps people connect, plan, or do what they need by using Groups.
So to do this, should I delete old groups? Any criteria I should consider? Should I keep them out there and just close them, marking each closed group with an "Archive"?
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I'd drop the owner an e-mail (not a chainlink message) asking if it's OK to delete the group (there may be content that they want to salvage) and give a timeline after which point it will be deleted in lieu of response.
I can think of a few groups I would be fine with seeing deleted, but may not want preserved in archive form for various reasons. Also, I'd take great care to keep from making private groups accidentally publicly accessible.
One other thought-- I'd suggest 18, or at least 14 months without a heartbeat as the minimum cutoff, as there are concievably groups that get fired up once a year for an event and go dormant in between; example is the bike winter group-- I don't think it's quite dead but I would really like to fire it up for the sticker compeition next September regardless of how active it may be otherwise. I think 18 months inactive would still elimate about 2/3 of the groups?
Howard makes good suggestions. And I think 14 months is a good cut off, that allows for an event that aspires to be an annual event but gets a little behind the schedule to revive itself.
We may participate in the forums, but your average bicyclist is not a groupie. We're independent minded. Kind of like trying to herd cats, I guess. As long as the entries are still there and searchable, what's the harm?
I think that closing them is probably counter to you goal of making them more relevant. Just make the default sorting by most used in the last 30 days. If you are just simply running out of hard drive space then "delete away".
The group RIDE FOR SHELTER could be deleted. It was based on training for a single event and it would be easy enough to re-group if we ever come together for a like event. Thanks, Ken
Yeah. I wonder if the purpose of the groups could be replaced by functionality of the site redesign. I only use the Chainlink for the forums, and, thanks to the nightmare that is Ning, they are hands down the worst forums I've ever had the agony of using. The redesigned site could perhaps include a greater number of sub-forums, negating the need for the group feature entirely?
EDIT: This is assuming that the functionality of the current groups could be handled by a subform.
Joe Guzzardo said:
We may participate in the forums, but your average bicyclist is not a groupie. We're independent minded. Kind of like trying to herd cats, I guess. As long as the entries are still there and searchable, what's the harm?
Purge them with fire.
Viking funeral style.
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