Usergroups?

[rodent]

Are you going to impliment the "Usergroups" section? It appears to be empty and featureless at the moment.

[technopatra]

The usergroups function needs to be explored and tested on our side. I am not sure what it's capablities are...dunno if anyone else does?

Mebbe we should hide that link until we know what value usergroups might provide, so as not to confuse anyone further.

[Isotopia]

Is it possible that the Usergroups link might be used to address the issue someone brought up for work groups communicating with other groups without the whole registration process involved in the current BM extranet?

[Isotopia]

Oh, and is it possible that I'm more beautiful than Madonna?

[precipitate]

technopatra wrote:
>The usergroups function needs to be explored and tested on our side. I
>am not sure what it's capablities are

At the risk of being a smartass, from the documentation:
<blockquote>
Usergroups
Usergroups are a powerful feature of phpBB 2.0.0. They allow moderator
permissions, private permissions, and any other special user settings to
be granted to multiple people. This makes it easy to change settings for
a group that has things in common without having to edit each user's
individual permissions. It is also possible to make the Group Moderator
(controls group membership) someone who is not an administrator,
granting power to users without leaving your board's administration
panel vulnerable.
</blockquote>

Groups are a very useful thing when you're granting different levels of
access to different classes of users. Say, people who can moderate the
Tips & Tricks area but not General Discussion. Or giving a small set of
people control over the Regionals areas to keep everything on-topic.

In the context of this current eplaya, I'm not sure they have much of an
application. In terms of designating "workers," sure, that could be done
with groups. And I haven't re-read the thread on why worker designations
would be useful here, but I suspect that the eplaya is intended to be a
much more open community. Whether it attracts denizens who are
capable of maintaining an open community remains to be seen.

[DE FACTO]

Hey, I can see this cutting down the work load of the admin by truck loads.

This may also solve the problem of multiple threads all over the place.

[technopatra]

At the risk of being a smartass, from the documentation:

No worries - thank you for taking the time to read the documentation I hadn't gotten to, yet.

In the context of this current eplaya, I'm not sure they have much of an
application.

III's link to the Shirky article about the (non) scalability of communities, which basically states that the bigger they are, the less intimate and therefore less active they become, gets me to thinking that it might, down the road, be desirable to allow usergroups to maintain their own portions of the eplaya.

When I checked out alt.playa, I found alot of people breathing a sigh of relief that they were away from the mass of newbies, they could relax in a smaller group of tried & true people, even tho that group was still open, they feel like they have more influence on the alt.playa.

Perhaps we should support this kind of evolution and branching...I dunno. In a way, the creation of the alt.playa & 3playa are the intended result. Not that people run screaming form an unusable tool or hostile environment, but that they care enough about the community they've created, that they will find a way to keep it going without the org.

Food for thought.

[III]

>I found alot of people breathing a sigh of relief that they were away from the mass of newbies

i dunno. there are a whole bunch of newbies that i, at leasst, find wonderful additions to the community. it's not that there are newbies, it's that there are individuals who i find overwhelming, and it would be nice for me if i could find a way to create a safe space from them, or filter my interactions with them.

i think this can be accomplished *without* a plonk button, btw.

i think the idea of supporting partitioned self selecting communities is a good one, and has been discussed (mostly between genghis and myself) on the 3 playa in the communities or 3playa design threads...

[PJ]

...When I checked out alt.playa, I found alot of people breathing a sigh of relief that they were away from the mass of newbies, they could relax in a smaller group of tried & true people, even tho that group was still open, they feel like they have more influence on the alt.playa...

I disagree with the first part of that. There are plenty of comments on the new alternative E-Playa communities to the effect that newbies are a good and desirable thing and, "This place now works reliably enough that we can invite more newbies." Yes, there have also been very specific comments openly stating that, (to paraphrase) "...it's a relief to be away from (insert one or two online-names here)" and indeed that is more relaxing than was interacting with or scrolling past those particular individual's posts on the official E-Playa. But yes, the early adopters of the alternative E-Playas did feel that they had more direct influence on the alternative BBS's structure and functioning. In fairness it's always much easier to influence the work of a single individual, and when the product is intentionally-simple results can be achieved, tested, and altered much more rapidly than is realistic when working with something as complex as the official E-Playa.

[Kinetic II]

I might be misunderstanding the point of usergroups, but I hope that nothing is established that helps build the online equivalent of the gated community, the cliquish, snotty, holier than thou communities that exclude people to their hearts content. I understand the desire to have a sheltered space yet I don't want to see anything even close to what I described above. The alt boards have a policy of openness, the dioxine list is open, and so far this board has been open access. I hope it continues.

This is just a base level reaction...I'm still looking at this and making sure I understand it. Enlightenment is always welcome.

[precipitate]

> i think this can be accomplished *without* a plonk button, btw.

How, please?

(Un)subscribing to threads? Nuh uh. The ubiquity of the < insult deleted >
makes that unworkable. Sure, I can avoid the threads they created, but
they're posting in mine too, and in yours, and in the ones I found
interesting until I got a lot of crap in them.

Community guidelines that get enforced? Possibly. Quite possibly. But I'm
kind of uncomfortable with the idea of making rules that affect an entire
community in order to deal with a handful of < insult deleted > that can't
monitor themselves.

Edit: Ooh, I deleted the insults even *before* I read technopatra's plea
over in General Discussion. Must be the hangover makin' me all nice
today.

[Bob]

<pre> technopatra:<br> > When I checked out alt.playa, I found alot of people breathing a sigh of <br> > relief that they were away from the mass of newbies, they could relax<br> > in a smaller group of tried & true people, even tho that group was still <br> > open, they feel like they have more influence on the alt.playa. </pre>

In coining "newbieplaya" I was referring to the admins as much as new users, but don't take it too personally.

Ob Topic: My concerns would be in defining what criteria are used for approval for usergroups (ugs); burdening admins with reviewing, creating permissions, and monitoring ugs; trusting the ugs not to be overly exclusive, as mentioned above; etc.

Also -- vapor ugs (empty, unattended by moderator, etc.) might immediately turn people off on an otherwise worthwhile topic.

What's missing in the Feedback section are references to existing phpBB examples -- can somebody link us to whatever template(s) the new eplaya was borrowed from, and maybe a few examples of working ugs?

[technopatra]

...When I checked out alt.playa, I found alot of people breathing a sigh of relief that they were away from the mass of newbies, they could relax in a smaller group of tried & true people, even tho that group was still open, they feel like they have more influence on the alt.playa...

I disagree with the first part of that. There are plenty of comments on the new alternative E-Playa communities to the effect that newbies are a good and desirable thing and, "This place now works reliably enough that we can invite more newbies."

You are right. Upon further reading, it seems that the initial sighs of relief were really more because of having a simpler, more familiar interface. Britton is keeping this very closely in mind as he works on a simpler skin.

[Bob]

> ...Upon further reading, it seems that the initial sighs of relief were really more because of having a simpler, more familiar interface.

From my reading, I think speed ranked at least as high as familiarity and the white-space factor.

> Britton is keeping this very closely in mind as he works on a simpler skin.

I think I've said elsewhere that the layout looks great, at least at first-face on the opening page. Whether that leads to it working great as a bbs interface is a different issue.

As a suggestion to moderators -- if they could manage to keep up with things, each main topic area could have a more descriptive tagline with
Current Topics: bla, bla, bla.
or somesuch. Would maybe provide and encourage more focus, and be a sort of stopgap whether usergroups are seriously being contemplated or not.