User Groups

Yes and "Most Popular" as of now is not the info users want is it, esp with the General Discussion Group at the top (this is the "most popular user group"--?) when we're only given the Top 6.

Yes CPod is reading this.

Good. I hope you saw my :-)

Hey Xiaophil cheers for 顶ing this. And that's a very good point, re "top 10" users rankings:

it is too short. The top 10 doesn't change much. Perhaps this creates the impression of a clique? I think if it was the top 20, the list would be a lot more fluid, and hopefully that would give people more of a feeling of being a part of things. We might also notice more CPod staff activity. As it stands, there are rarely more than one or two staff members that crack the top ten at any given time.

The attention it deseves? Look at user group participation. Im all in favor of user groups but it needs cleaning up. There are over 200 user groups and most have a couple users, a couple posts, and they have no activity for sometimes years. There are few with merit. The most popular and newest lists should be kept up, and groups with no activity for a year should go into an archived group list somewhere or dare I say it - be deleted. . People inadvertently create groups just to make a post. Others are basically one post wonders that quickly fizzle, and predictably so. Then there are gems like transcripts with Tal, Goulniki's group (now stopped) and even your 中文把。 Some groups were dead long before they were transferred here from the old "88 groups" system. See "character insanity". John B's firestorm that lasted one week or so. Long dead it still sits, and occasionally someone wants to join it, having no way to know that its defunct, unless they look at posting dates. Id say clean it up first, then maybe there should be some minimum criteria for creating one, at least a suggested criteria. I couldnt care less about the frequent users list but I fail to see what one has to do with the other. Both could be counted. It doesnt have to be a trade off.

I think I agree with about everything you said here.

Yep RJ, you nailed it! Good to see you back in your old style!

Exactly! Additionally, I think it would be helpful if in addition to the User Groups category, there was a Location Based Groups and a Language Exchange Groups category. I think it is great those groups are there, but sorting them into different pots would help everyone find what they are looking for.

I totally agree with most of what you've said here RJ. Of course Groups need to be cleaned up. And it's my fault for giving it so much space, but actually the point of my post was not a campaign to get the current Rankings (top 10 users) replaced or abolished. The point, the purpose of this post, actually was this:

Some of us have founded, or have been actively involved in some really interesting User Groups, and might like to give those a little PR--let people know they exist. Please feel free to start a thread here and do that!

Regarding the Most Popular list, of course we need to be shown which groups are the "most popular"--if that means those Groups most supported by activity by most users. As I've said before, currently the "Most Popular" list seems only to show us which groups have the most members, regardless of whether there is any recent activity. And am I right in guessing that unless a member who has joined a group has actually gone to the trouble of leaving it, then whether or not that person is still a CPod user now they remain counted among the group members? So yes--this needs cleaning up like you say. If the current "Most Popular" list (of just 6, including the General Discussion group!) were actually useful I would never have come up with the suggestion that CPod give us rankings of the Most Active User Groups at all.

And ... I see no need to cut Phil down for showing me support just because you beg to differ. Sorry if I'm misunderstanding and you haven't done that--it just looked to me though, like you were taking some impatience with someone (me?) or something out on him and I was surprised, to be honest. But I hope actually I'm totally wrong here, and look forward to offering a proper apology once you set me straight.

Also, I'd like to say the "most active users" list I find quite useful. There are certain people like go_manly and bababardwan who are really active, and by looking at posts they have made, I can follow their study strategies (or their funny posts), and find active groups etc. It's part of being in a community.

Sorry Zhen (Phil actually), I actually do support groups and your right to use and advertise them. I could have worded it better. I didnt really mean to aim directly at Phil like that.

Cheers

RJ

RJ

I was puzzled a bit by your opening sentence but not offended. I prefer Zhen's method over yours by a small margin (although I think they would work excellent together). However, what really appeals to me about your method, i.e. archiving or deleting old groups, is that as far as I can tell would not require massive technology changes. It seems to me that CPod staff could find all the seldom used groups, send the monitor an email, if no reply within a week --blamo-- delete the group the old fashioned way, manually. Oh yeah, as you can see, I prefer just deleting them.

I'm cool RJ. I could have made my point in much better words myself--and "puzzled" like Phil said is actually closer than "surprised". Thanks for sharing your view on user groups. As most of us probably do, I completely agree with the need to set aside and remove those groups that just are not "alive"--instead of just leaving them all up there for users to go through--and I'm sure the CPod guys are also thinking the same thing.

I wasn't going to complain here in this post, only wanted to do something positive "in the meantime", as we wait for CPod to set things right here--but just have to say this again. It is really incredible that the option we've been given if we want to be sure we won't miss any interesting community activity is to go through and manually join "every active user group" out there! You can't be serious. I'm surprised that CPod could not foresee how annoying and stressful this would be for us. This is no technical problem, it's a case of the CPod people having little intuitive sense of user community experience ... it's disappointing. OK I'm done now.

Xiaophil you're sounding almost like you support me more than I support me haha. I'm not only all for cleaning out the User Groups including removing and deleting, I actually thought that point was so obvious we shouldn't have to be articulating it.

Thanks Zhen, and I agree with you. There does seem to be a frustrating lack of intuitive sense at cpod.

xiao_liang, haha no one needs to go to a list to ”find" users as active as go_manly and Baba (btw where is Baba ... ?)! And to follow their posts we only have to click on their avatar or username link. (^_^)/

I get your point though. Obviously there are people who see value in the user Rankings and enjoy them.