Posted by greggles on March 30, 2009 at 6:15pm
I'd like to get some feedback about how to improve the groups submission and moderation process.
Based on some initial discussion with some of the key folks who actually moderate groups, here are the major tasks:
- Improve the guidelines for adding groups - these are currently visible at http://groups.drupal.org/node/add/og I think they are actually quite good, aside from some small tweaks. I've started a wiki to hold the Group Submission Guidelines (please help refine them.
- Have some "default responses" issue to add this to modr8
- Provide more visibility into the queue and more credit to the people doing moderation issue in modr8 queue
- Provide visibility of groups that are relatively low activity
- Provide a list of similar nodes during "preview" of a group submission based on a search using the title of the node (this would also help reduce duplicate issue submission)
Numbers 3 and 4 can probably start off as custom queries run in the d.b. directly and then get some code around them to make them more publicly visible.
I'd love for folks to discuss ways we can improve this process for everyone involved. I think it's confusing and potentially upsetting to people when they submit a group that gets denied - we should reduce frustration for those folks. It's also hard for our moderators to keep motivated and active when they spend a lot of time doing the same things over and over...
Comments
Improvement Sugestion:
While http://groups.drupal.org/node/add/og is concise and accurate, I wonder if a FAQ style presentation would answer the questions that many users may be asking themselves as they go through the process.
The guidelines imply some answers but a FAQ would spell it out.
- Why do we have moderators? obvious answers, but apparently not obvious to all
- What's wrong with approving all group requests and let the best ones survive? further clarification of the fewer, larger, busier groups VS. many small, sleepy groups
- Who defines "overlap" with regard to a group's scope? another opportunity to reinforce the role of moderators and the reason for fewer groups
- Can I plead my proposed group's case? an expression of the humanity of the gdo project via a willingness to discuss any issues that the proposing user may have
I believe that this would go a long way in putting a different and better light on the process. this "FAQ" could simply be placed in http://groups.drupal.org/node/add/og where it would be upfront and center.
- Doug Vann
- www.dougvann.com
- www.twitter.com/dougvann
tl;dr
I like the questions/answers you are providing but I fear already that many people do not read that set of guidelines. "tl;dr" and all.
Maybe you can improve the "short" version and we can also have a long version for those who do want to read it?
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Been thinking...
Greggles,
I' have been busy trying to organize Local Group Leaders over at http://groups.drupal.org/local-user-group-organizers and I'm looking forward to our 1st Virtual-Meeting Saturday 4/25 09:00 UCT-4
I just re-read this thread and a few things occur to me.
Unless I am mistaken there is not a single node on GDO that is not related to the OG module. I can appreciate the tl;dr theory and at the same time I don't subscribe to the "publish it and they will read" theory either. I believe a strong focus of information is never a detriment to the goals of GDO. Looking at the current front page we have some recent content in the form of posts, groups, jobs, and the planet feed. The tabs are simply more filtered displays of content. Just today, as I was preparing for this post, I discovered the About this site link that goes to http://groups.drupal.org/about which is a post from this group. Thank link is too buried to be useful.
If I may, I would like to take the scope of this thread and back it out a bit for a larger view of GDO. [the wiki has been nicely edited by the way. Perhaps a decision can be made and the edits published.]
In the D6 GDO are there any plans for nodes that are not associated with groups? OR nodes similar to the About this site where a group post os featured as a static link? I believe that this may well be the place where we can capture the attention pf passers by. I have worked very hard to be in the know about the Drupal community and it has paid off. I am wondering if we can offer some more "static" pages from the front page of GDO; pages that offer FAQs, Details, How-To-Participate.
Granted, this may sound elementary to some, but I don't want to assume that the user knows anything. We can have anonymous users be treated to far more links to "basic info."
Now, If I'm suggesting more content for the site then the next question is, where does the content come from? That's where we collaborate and get it written. I would be happy to carry that torch.
There are the greggles of GDO with years of Drupal and many years in the Drupal community behind them.
There are users more like me, who in short order have jumped in the deep end.
I want to see an organized, committed effort to target the remaining demographic of users who maybe haven't thought to try and find a group in their area. I'd like to see a page [out in the open] about starting a group in your area. Heck, I'd be happy to skype with someone who said they needed help and wanted to draw on my experiences.
I guess it really comes down to help. "What can GDO do to help?" In my case I tend to focus on helping local groups. I say GDO can and needs to do more and I'm willing to help make it happen. I'm loaded, just point me in a direction and shoot! :-)
- DV - www.dougvann.com - www.twitter.com/dougvann
I think some static FAQ
I think some static FAQ pages and such are perfectly reasonable and much needed. I don't think anyone is married to the current homepage for that matter. Please do forge ahead.
last checkup and thoughts on universities/other groups?
We can always revise this, but I wanted to bump it one more time. Lots of people have complained about the policy, but I don't see much editing of it here...
I'd also like to discuss two a issue: universities and other specific groups.
We already have some of these and they don't really make sense to me 1 and 2.
I think that all posts going into these groups make sense either in 1) a regional group for that college and 2) university groups or Drupal in education or some other topic focussed group (like enterprise or performance or...).
You can substitute "university" with "non-profit."
What are other people's thoughts? Are there legitimate uses of g.d.o for specific universities/institutions?
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yes to university groups
I think it's a natural group type that'd draw in I think a significant number of people that might never join a generic local drupal group. We started at a Drupal group at BYU which is fairly short order has attracted around 50 members made up of students, faculty, campus staff and alumni. These numbers aren't too far below the number that have joined the Utah Drupal group and there's little overlap between the two memberships. Having the group has made it much easier to evangelize Drupal (BYU's homepage along with many subsites will be going to Drupal btw later this summer -- a decision made by and large due to several campus software engineers attendance at the Do It With Drupal conference last fall), organize meetups, and so forth.
So yes, I think allowing university / institutional groups is a good idea. The pickup might not be as good as many universities such as ours has resources for creating their own platforms to support groups like this but g.d.o is a great platform for those that don't.
I think, speaking in general, good groups are those that are formed around strong social objects. So that social object can be a topic (e.g. High Performance, or Drupal in Education), a location and so on. I think institutions of various sorts is another class of strong social objects that make sense to be allowed to become groups on g.d.o.
Kyle Mathews
Kyle Mathews
Good Job on that new group!
Thank you Kyle for the testimony.
This speaks to the core of how new local groups get formed. In this case a non GDO site was used. I'd be curious if (1) a request was made for a GDO site OR (2) If an expected response of "no" precluded the request OR (3) the need for a GDO site was minimized by the campus resources.
Regardless, we see Kyle making the appeal that Universities and Institutions should have their own page and not a sub-panels-page of a regional group.
I can predict some of the responses that might come down the pike on this one.
I imagine strong issue being taken with the following: "a significant number of people that might never join a generic local drupal group"
Some quantity of ppl? Yes. A significant number? Up for debate but likely not too significant.
GDO [regardless of its functionality, rules, etc] IS the premier place to get the ball rolling on nearly every level of Drupal Community Activity. BYU may have enjoyed the resources that they used, and I do see that Kyle appears to have included the Utah site in all of his BYU site posts. That is commendable, but not having the event posts on GDO keeps them off the radar of the events listings. I can guarantee that that will cost you any visitors, but i do know that it doesn't help.
On my Indiana site, as I've mentioned, we have the Lafayete tab. It has it's own address at http://groups.drupal.org/node/4507/lafayette [albeit not a pretty url]
With them using the /indiana pages, we are more easily kept aware of goings-ons, and we don't all have to subscribe to yet another group.
I believe that if we could raise the citizenship of some panels pages to a higher level and list them in the Directory, and maybe even clean up the URL some... If we did all of this, I believe the value of GDO for local groups would raise tremendously. Would this displace Kyle's site? not likely. But will it go a long way to helping ppl keep events and news on GDO? I say, "Yes!"
WTG Kyle for getting such a great group started out there at BYU!
to change or not to change
On one hand we could have a separate group for each institution, AND cross post to the regional group as well.
On the other hand we could do what I did and give a University a tab of there own on the regional group page. I monitor the posts and make sure that all Purdue relevant posts are tagged properly so as to appear on the Purdue tab of the group. I would be very excited to see an Indiana University tab, a Notre Dame tab or even a Northern Indiana Region tab for upper state Drupalers.
I believe that this model would allow for larger more active groups while also providing for unique needs to the individual subgroups. The tabs can be configured to allow a top pane that is custom and can serve just like the home-page top content.
So the flow goes like this... An individual contacts the regional GDO page manager and says, "Hey! I'm getting ### number of ppl together on campus and we'd love to promote it on GDO." The individual joins the regional group and the manager sets up a tab just for that group and gives the local organizer admin privileges.
Boom...
Every one's happy.
The only thing missing is some flag to denote that this tab is actually its own separate group and not to a topical tab such as "events." If such a flag existed 2 things become necessary.
1] The Master List of groups would need to reflect the subgroups
2] We would need to moderate which tabs become sub-group so that the Master List isn't flooded with subgroups that are not what subgroups were intended to be. Perhaps regional managers put in a request for a tab to be elevated to subgroup?
It is clear to me that it is going to take some amount of coding and/or trickery to really meet the needs of the regional and Higher Education groups. The payoff will be tremendous and the appreciation will be enormous. These changes to the work-flow of GDO could practically eliminate the need for multiple groups.
Thanks for the
Thanks for the guidelines!
Question: May I approve a group I have created if I'm sure it follows the guidelines?
Blessings!
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ideally not
I think ideally people wouldn't moderate their own group, but it's not a huge deal. Ideally if you want to get a group reviewed then help provide reviews of 2 or 3 groups in the queue and ask for someone else to review your group.
I just moderated 4 groups - maybe yours was in the list ;)
Greg
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I have found some groups
I have found some groups with moderation replies which seem abandoned by the moderator, may I reply them if I have not originally moderated that group?
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more stuff...
(3 John 1:2) Dear friend, I pray that you may enjoy good health and that all may go well with you, even as your soul is getting along well.
--
[develCuy](http://steemit.com/@develcuy) on steemit
Comments on group submission experience
Hi there,
On the heels of my new group (Science Applications) being approved, Greggles invited me to relay my experience with starting it.
I found the submission process surprisingly easy, and appreciated the quick emails about being a group administrator, etc. There was a bit of confusion due to multiple emails about the group, one of which didn't have a clear message to me (thus open to misinterpretation), and I found the change of status message on the group's initial page from "This group has been submitted for moderation..." to "The post has been submitted for moderation..." to be puzzling.
(Also, the fact that I got the notification that I was an administrator for the group, just before the cryptic email about my having submitted the group, probably led to the confusion as well. Perhaps that email could wait to go out to the group administrator after the group has been approved? Or does a group require an administrator in order to get through approval?)
A more formal email saying the application has been received would be a nice touch, too. It would be good to include a timeframe and an explanation of the process, something like:
"Thank you for submitting your application for the new group [x] to groups.drupal.org. We value the contributions of our community and look forward to taking a careful look at your application. This is done by a group of volunteer members of groups.drupal.org who have agreed to act as reviewers, so it can take some time. You will receive notification of the status of your group application from groups.drupal.org within [x] weeks."
Thanks for listening! I appreciate the opportunity comment on the process.
Jennifer