Social Group functionality.

[arcticsun]

Hi guys

Ive been around here on ICMAG for a spell and I there are 2 social groups that i maintain so-called leadership over.

I like the group function, im a member of quite a few groups. There were many well known self proclaimed groups even before the group function.

The group forums have certain limitations to them. There is no option to quote people, but most importantly there is no vote function.

I think the layout of the social group forums and the lack of options therein may be some of the reason why many groups have so many inactive members. Groups are worn merely as a badge of identity usually in the form of little banners and logos, they contain little substance in terms of actual information and correspondence among the members. Or i am sure they could be more used.


My first plea on the road to changing this is that we would love a vote function in the groups. This would allow for example votes for leadership of the group, voting for new members and also for socially bond strengthening activities such as picture contests a.o.t. which may bring the interest levels up.


One cannot see what other people have written when replying to a thread in the group forums. This makes replying in detail to a possibly long and technical discussion alittle inconvenient if one doesnt have a great memory or open a second window


Im sure you guys have considered the groups at some point, we were allowed to start and manage a second group not long ago.

When are we going to see social groups forums interface facelift with more functions?

 

[Skip]

Thanks for your feedback Arcticsun. I'm kinda reluctant to touch the social group features because it's likely there will be more features added later in another vbulletin upgrade. When that happens all my code is dumped as well as the data it accumulated. So we lose a lot of what ppl post and my time is wasted too.

vBulletin has a new beta version out now, but we may not be able to upgrade to it for a significant period (until all the bugs are worked out). When we do we may lose a big part of this site to make the upgrade (all the features I added in the past year).

So there's a trade-off and it's not always worth it. If there is something easy to add (just a template thing) it might be possible to do that. But major changes require major coding and it might not be worth it if we do an upgrade at a later date.

You're welcome to make more suggestions and those that can be implemented easily will be added. I would sooner add something different from what the forums do, to the social groups. Otherwise a social group just becomes like a forum and their raison d'etre disappears.

 

[cocktail frank]

it would be great to have stickies in the SG's aswell Skip.
if it can be done.
just putting it out there.

 

[arcticsun]

Thanks for the reply Skip, much appriciated.

I hope you guys will consider implementing regular successful forum features such as the ones mentioned here by myself and frank in addition to any new ones. Thanks for bringing that up by the way Frank i had forgot that one

I dont think there should be any reason to exclude these useful functions because they are already available in the regular forums. They may be just as practical if not even more so in the group forums.

I do understand your reasons for not wanting to do loads of work if there is a chance it could be all for nothing. Im sure programming is no


Thanks for hearing me out in any case, im sure you will find a way to make most ppl happy eventually

keep up the good work Skip.

 

[Skip]

Yeah, I was already aware of features that the Social group is lacking. I had hoped the last upgrade would've added more features, but it didn't. I've also reviewed some of the coding necessary to fix it and realized it was an enormous task because they'd programmed the social groups differently than the forums (I'm not sure why). In other words it's not just a template issue but a major coding project.... vBulletin has the resources (coders) to do it right. I'd just be hacking a temporary version that would become obsolete the next upgrade we do.

 

[CANNACO-OP]

I like the intimate and cozey nature of a social group, but would appreciate a vote and quote..thanks for listening. Canna