Reform of the 'Social Group' feature.
Well, I'm not sure if this warrants its own thread, especially seeing as I'm pointing something out which has probably already been many times already. Basically, up until February I had never found the Social Group feature of any real use: It just existed so that I could place a few badges on my profile stating my allegiance to a certain belief/phenomenon.
However, if any of you remember the ill-fated attempt at creating Role-Play in the TD, our business during that fortnight was conducted mainly within two groups. This was the first time I made real use of the feature (which is already a testament in itself) and I found that the system was something of a handicap. I can outline my grievances in the following few terms:
- The absence of suitable subscription: I don't really understand why group subscriptions don't send notifications directly to the user like subscribed threads do. I means that practically all of the groups I see are desolate. Often a few discussions are started in the early weeks, then people forget about them. Even if people post, there's nothing that will really make others seek to look it up, aside from emails sent outside of TWC to the user's linked inbox. Personally, the email I linked to my TWC account is one I rarely use, and I don't think that this method of communication is sufficient: This may be due to a lack of interest/faith in the current Group system which seems widespread among users, or lack of use of email accounts, as I stated above.
- This is a minor suggestion, and probably doesn't concern most groups, but I found that the absence of polls made decision-making or simply asking for opinions from others a less streamlined procedure.
Basically, I'm sure there are other suggestions which can make the group system better, but these are the ones I can think of currently. I'd say that it would be a pleasant addition for TWC if Group membership became more than a badge of allegiance but also a sort of subforum running in parallel to all the other threads where people can discuss their favourite things, like the My Little Pony thread. Are Groups so obscure mainly because it is expected of members to create their own threads for that kind of thing? I find that threads are too linear and unwieldy to accomodate multiple simultaneous discussions of various topics. In addition, 'Social' Groups are probably, in their current state, the least sociable and practical means of forming a bond with like-minded users.
Cheers.
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