Posted by pwolanin on January 27, 2010 at 5:25pm
regional groups should have open membership, so changing this group's settings
open membership
Group organizers
Group categories
East Midlands areas
- Derbyshire (3)
- Leicestershire (3)
- Lincolnshire (3)
- Northamptonshire (3)
- Nottinghamshire (4)
- Rutland (3)
Comments
Then how do you ensure that
Then how do you ensure that the group remains regional? The whole point of this group is to "create a community of Drupal users and supporters across the East Midlands". In fact, if membership is open to all regional groups, then why even bother to have regions - they're meaningless.
By all means change it, but please also find someone else to take it over.
Drupal website design, optimisation and hosting in Nottingham and the East Midlands
Find the best Drupal Tutorial Websites
The goal is to encourage
The goal is to encourage people to self-organize and join discussions that interest them. Requiring approval just discourages participation for no real benefit. Have you had people begging to get in who live in distant regions?
Begging is going a bit far,
Begging is going a bit far, but yes, there have been a lot of people from outside the region trying to join. That, in and of itself, is a fact of life.
However, a lot of these people when asked if they're in the East Midlands stated that they were, when, upon examining their websites, etc., it was clear that they weren't. I'm all for open discussion and for people joining discussions that "interest them", but if they feel it necessary to lie to get into a group, I would question the reasons why they are "interested" in joining. Is it to help the use of Drupal across the East Midlands to grow and flourish - which is why I set the group up? Or is it more likely that they're joining so they can just try and promote their own services into whatever region they can get into and they see this site as a means of doing that?
If it's the latter, then your open discussions should help them do that just nicely.
Either way, please remove me as administrator - I'm not interested in running an open group of that manner and, if it's what I want to do, there's nothing stopping me from setting up a separate site to achieve the aims I originally had, is there? In any event, I haven't done that much with the group anyway! I wouldn't be surprised if someone else does a better job than I have so far!
Kind regards
Patrick
Drupal website design, optimisation and hosting in Nottingham and the East Midlands
Find the best Drupal Tutorial Websites
spammers can (and will) be
spammers can (and will) be dealt with harshly. Not suggesting you need to put up with garbage/off-topic posts.
If you don't want to be admin, please get consent of some other group member to take it over.
lack of activity caused by being closed?
I'm sorry that this policy is frustrating for you.
You mention that you haven't done much with the group and I note that there are only 18 members, which is a bit small. Ironically, perhaps that is caused by the fact that it is a 'closed' group.
There have been various movements onto and away from groups.drupal.org over the years. The most recent trend is that people are moving onto groups: it's the most reliable place and has the highest visibility. The California "High Desert" group abandoned meetup.com, and the Brazillian group is moving dozens of local groups off of their local server and onto here.
So, we can definitely try to find an alternate person to run the group but I hope you will reconsider the position. In my experience across dozens of groups, people who join are at least interested in the area and are rarely spammers or malicious. How about you try with it being open for a little while and document any negative experiences here?
knaddison blog | Morris Animal Foundation
Hi Greg, Yeah OK - hopefully
Hi Greg,
Yeah OK - hopefully you and Peter picked up from my last post that there's no ill feeling here - you run Groups.Drupal and your policy is up to you, even if I don't entirely agree with it. And I also openly admit that I haven't done much with the group.
I'll take your suggestion and give it a go for a short while but, just to put some background behind my last post, we're building a network of creative professionals here at UnderDesign and, although our numbers are mostly here in the East Midlands of the UK, our plan in 2010 is to go nationally. We have a lot of larger clients and are looking to handle larger projects and for that we need more "creatives" on board and, in particular will need some more Drupal skills.
We're very Drupal - the website that we're building for the creatives network will, for example, run on Drupal - and we're still very keen to promote the use of Drupal here in our neighbourhood, but with the creatives network, we're taking on creatives of all sorts (Alfresco, Plone, developers of various sorts, copywriters, designers, etc.) and I really need to set up a network elsewhere where I can attract some good Drupal skills as well as continue to attract the others. We basically bring the creatives together to work on larger projects that we go out and win.
So, I will hang about and give it a try for a short while, but a) I really do think it might be best to start looking for another person to run this group anyway as I'll have my hands full in 2010 and b) I think I need to create a network outside of Groups.Drupal to cater for the needs of our entire creatives network and not just the members who are into Drupal.
Drupal website design, optimisation and hosting in Nottingham and the East Midlands
Find the best Drupal Tutorial Websites