Post by George on Dec 18, 2004 18:20:11 GMT -5
Hi Oded,
Change is as inevitable as it is disconcerting.
I apologise if I appear to be pushing things along at a rapid clip, but I've never been one to do things by halves, and there seems to be a general concensus to professionalise the group - at least among the original small active posters group.
Yesterday I emailed every member of the Yahoo Group individually who had not already registered (a really painful exercise, incidentally) to advise them about the new forum, and as a result we now have 11 people registered there. I expect more in coming days, as people check their email.
The forum itself can be password protected if desired, and posting priviledges can be set to prevent different levels of users seeing and/or posting to individual discussions. This is one important reason I see for moving to the forum; on Yahoo Groups everyone can see every message, and as the number of messages increases we are confronted with having to wade through a huge amount of messages and quoted text each day that are not relevant to everyone.
The forum format makes it very easy to pinpoint, at a glance, exactly what is relevant to you, as you can see the date, time and by whom the most recent messages were posted. You can also send people private messages for more trivial matters, and effectively chat with people who are online at the same time as yourself using this method.
The forum cannot be set up to send you a notification of every message posted, but I think that is a small price to pay for the greater flexibility and control the system offers - and you can receive email notifications for replies posted to messages you post yourself.
Overall I felt it was more important to set up a forum first, and worry about deciding the various access levels second. Currently it is set up so only registered members can post to all discussions. The one exception to this is the general discussion, where non-registered members can post.
My feeling is that in the initial phase our website and its facilities and data needs to be visible and acessible to anyone who wants to see and participate in it, and over coming months, as we decide on what the priviledges of membership entail, and as we increase our technical ability, we can start locking down parts of the site to paying members only. The idea is to give people a taste of what they are likely to start missing unless they first pay their $15; I don't think there's much point advertising our existence if the only thing people see when they reach our website is the front page and a demand for $15!
I hope this clarifies my thinking appropriately.
Change is as inevitable as it is disconcerting.
I apologise if I appear to be pushing things along at a rapid clip, but I've never been one to do things by halves, and there seems to be a general concensus to professionalise the group - at least among the original small active posters group.
Yesterday I emailed every member of the Yahoo Group individually who had not already registered (a really painful exercise, incidentally) to advise them about the new forum, and as a result we now have 11 people registered there. I expect more in coming days, as people check their email.
The forum itself can be password protected if desired, and posting priviledges can be set to prevent different levels of users seeing and/or posting to individual discussions. This is one important reason I see for moving to the forum; on Yahoo Groups everyone can see every message, and as the number of messages increases we are confronted with having to wade through a huge amount of messages and quoted text each day that are not relevant to everyone.
The forum format makes it very easy to pinpoint, at a glance, exactly what is relevant to you, as you can see the date, time and by whom the most recent messages were posted. You can also send people private messages for more trivial matters, and effectively chat with people who are online at the same time as yourself using this method.
The forum cannot be set up to send you a notification of every message posted, but I think that is a small price to pay for the greater flexibility and control the system offers - and you can receive email notifications for replies posted to messages you post yourself.
Overall I felt it was more important to set up a forum first, and worry about deciding the various access levels second. Currently it is set up so only registered members can post to all discussions. The one exception to this is the general discussion, where non-registered members can post.
My feeling is that in the initial phase our website and its facilities and data needs to be visible and acessible to anyone who wants to see and participate in it, and over coming months, as we decide on what the priviledges of membership entail, and as we increase our technical ability, we can start locking down parts of the site to paying members only. The idea is to give people a taste of what they are likely to start missing unless they first pay their $15; I don't think there's much point advertising our existence if the only thing people see when they reach our website is the front page and a demand for $15!
I hope this clarifies my thinking appropriately.