How do you think Groups should work on new community?

[CommunityAdmin]

We have 634 groups that need some consolidation and organization. I'm currently going through and attempting to categorize them and determine what is what.

There are some groups that were created but have no content in them. Overall, we want groups to be valuable and purposeful. Currently they are hard to follow and find but there are other community platforms that are more successful at utilizing groups.

There is an opportunity for meaningful conversations to happen in these groups and I'd like to get your thoughts on how to revitalize it.

They could get people together in regions, activity groups, by age group, by quit method, by month of the year, special interest, marital status, occupation, misc. (Motivation, daily quote, sound off, funny story etc.) to name a few.

Membership would be open to member run groups unless there was a very specific reason for it to be closed.

New groups would go to through an application process to flush out the purpose of the group, set standards/best practices, discuss configuration, etc. so that we don't end up with a whole bunch of groups that don't add a lot of value to the members. 

[ShawnP]

After reading the summary from the online chat, I think in regards to the groups that you should be quit for so many days before you can create a group. That way we don't have a group full of newbies possibly giving out wrong advice. It is always great to hear from the newbies cause they are experiencing at that given time and can help but to run the group would be a different story. Some only stay active for so long and then just leave. I think this is why we have the problems with the groups now. This method might prevent some of this from happening in the future.

[CommunityAdmin]

@Shawn

Thanks for the idea.

Regrettably there wouldn't be a way to validate their actual quit date. If a person sets their quit date as June 1, 1994 though they haven't actually been quit but automation allows them to create a group this would be gaming the system.  

It could also possibly be(platform dependent) status or activity based. For example, a person posts X number of blog posts or Posts X # of comments before they earn the ability to create a group.  Still I think there would be value in having an application process so the groups are as organized and supported as they can be.

Mark
EX Community Manager

[ShawnP]

I would say # of comments cause some of us don't blog much. I do understand what you are saying though.