Purpose of this group?

Hi Michelle,

I joined this group to discuss how to build and improve online community sites using Drupal. I haven't been very active, but I hope that this group continues to stick to its original focus!

We host an international community of human rights practitioners (a community of practice): http://www.newtactics.org. Not necessarily "local" but definitely a community of people that have something in common. We bring community members together each month to discuss human rights tactics and people share challenges, lessons learned, questions, advice, etc.

Thanks!
Kristin Antin
New Tactics Online Community Builder

I have no problem with you moving off-topic posts (or jobs) from this group and keeping it as it was meant to be.

The posts you're referring to (and I'm pretty sure I know which ones they are) could probably live just fine in the Drupal Association group.

Perhaps re-purposing http://groups.drupal.org/drupalorg-improvements to a more "Drupal Community" group would be something to discuss.

~silverwing

Community group was about building community within a site. Everything from technical solutions to problems, to community management issues people were encountering, like how to moderate participation, deal with trolling, encourage engagement. It grew out of a session I led at the OSCMS conference in Sunnyvale in 2007 (or did the session grow out of the group?).

Social Networking (mentioned in the other thread) has had more of a focus of connecting to outside social networks. Facebook, etc.

If people are fine with merging these, that's okay with me. Needs evolve. Siloed communities have limited value these days.

However, this is not and never has been about the Drupal Community. I don't know what a group about the Drupal Community would mean? There are already plenty of groups focusing on improving the Drupal community experience. I do not believe it would be appropriate to shift this group to making it just about the Drupal Community.

I just found this group because of this post. I'm in the process of attempting to define a community of practice and to put together a site to support it. I'm having some issues trying to dig through the Drupal documentation and actually understand the key features of different modules in terms of how I can use them to support my needs. I very much appreciate having found this group and would appreciate participating in discussion around these topics.

From what I'm reading I think there are three potential topic areas that I've seen brought forth. Two from the central theme of what I understand this group might be about, and a somewhat different 'essence' to the Social Networking Sites group. (BTW - I had previously joined the Social Networking Sites group because it was the closest group I could find to this topic.)

1. How to use Drupal technologies to construct and maintain sites where the focus of the site is synonymous with the focus of the community. I see this as the case with my interest and possibly with the concept expressed above by both @kjantin and @laura s. These fall under what I would term Community of Practice (CoP) or Community of Interest (CoI) sites.
2. Principles and practices of building and managing the sites defined by #1 above. The discussion here might primarily be concerned with what, in essence, are the priniples and ideas that become the requirements for the technologies. Different ways of going about managing a community drive toward different needs drive potentially toward different tools, or different ways of using tools.
3. How to use Drupal technologies to construct sites where the focus of the site is to provide tools to allow the members to form fundamentally autonomous groups to network among themselves. In this instance, the overall technology platform provides technical cohesion, but there is no cohesion of purpose to the group other than use of the technology to perform networking. This is closer to what I see in Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. I don't see that kind of site as a CoP/CoI site, although they can definitely be used to host one of more CoP/CoI groups.

From my perspective I think that the type of technology requirements and how it would be applied is probably different between #1 and #3. (#2 is really an offshoot of #1, and a similar point could be added to go with #3.) So the real issue is #1 vs. #3.

I see the Social Networking Sites group as more focused on #3. I would see some of the same tools (Organic Groups, FOAF, Private Message, etc.) coming into play, but with somewhat different requirements when focused on #1. In addition, there may be other tools that make more sense if the focus is #1 rather than #3. I would see this group as more focused on #1.

If the distinction between #1 and #3 is worthwhile, I think the groups should remain independent. If the distinction is insignificant, maybe the groups should merge.

Edit: After reading http://groups.drupal.org/node/75028 I might add 'local community' as another variation. However, I think that is closer to #1 above than #3, and could possibly fit as a geographical distinction on #1 in terms of purpose or focus of the community.

Edit2: @Michelle, have you attempted any form of membership comparison between the two groups?