EC addition...

[Ander Blue]

So I had a weird dream last night. I dreamed that I was on EC and had just gotten two new notifications. Turns out the notifications were invitations to join a group page. One page was for my hometown and another was for my home state. I looked at the home town invitation and it showed other people on this site who were active in my hometown.

Overall the dream ended up being a dream and turning pretty weird, but when I woke up I thought about the idea of having regional pages on the EC. Is this something that could be done? Is it something that has been considered in the past but has since been refuted? I was thinking in to it a bit and thought that it could probably be done pretty easily if you just had an account sign up and its user page served as the group wall. hmm what are some other people's thoughts on this?

[Shevanel]

I understand the idea, but EC =/= Facebook or a Networking site in general. xD Dreams about EC are awesome though

[Just Adam]

i liek teh idea and would be lgbt specific so is still information and not a full blown social network ...though is...but its all in teh wording

but as joey said its a facebook ish idea and ...to my mind that may add to it beeing blocked in certain environments.,

Originally Posted by Just Adam

..to my mind that may add to it beeing blocked in certain environments.,

This place is already blocked in school... Don't see how you could block it any more. xD

[Martin]

Would it actually offer any benefit though?

I know there are various features on EC that aren't based on support/resources, but would having regional pages not encourage cliques to form? Iirc, vBulletin has a Societies/Groups feature that was disabled for that reason, and I don't necessarily see what the necessity would be for enabling it for this type of usage. As a support forum I consider it fairly important to keep everybody as open with each other as possible, and I think the more 'corners' you create on the site the more likely you are to start seeing certain groups of members settling into them and intimidating outsiders from going there. That would completely go against EC's 'open for all' vibe.

The most apparent problem for the idea would be how it works alongside the security features. The personal information ban is difficult to maintain when there are groups for every region that is represented by members, and there is no way the staff could monitor each and every group to make sure no members are being silly enough to post information that allows them to be traced (whether it's an address, email, full name etc). I'm not against the idea because it gives a networking type feel, I just don't really think it's effective to have staff monitor groups when they should be focusing on the support aspect of the site.

As I said, I'm not against it because of the whole social networking/facebook vibe it may give off, but I do not see how it would integrate into the sites security without requiring the staff to watch each and every group closely. Wall messages already test us enough, and I think anything more would just cause a complete burnout. If that was to happen and the security slipped then who knows what the owners would do to EC...

Although, that's my perspective only. That's not me vetoing the idea or speaking on behalf of the staff/anybody else.

[Greggers]

Good in theory (and i dont think a more facebook style is a bad thing, facebook works for a reason) but im afraid it will only lead to attempted hook-ups

Young, closeted, horny gay people tend to pounce anything they find within an 100 mile radius Science backs me up on this one. Trufax.

[Just Adam]

Originally Posted by Martin

Would it actually offer any benefit though?

I know there are various features on EC that aren't based on support/resources, but would having regional pages not encourage cliques to form? Iirc, vBulletin has a Societies/Groups feature that was disabled for that reason, and I don't necessarily see what the necessity would be for enabling it for this type of usage. As a support forum I consider it fairly important to keep everybody as open with each other as possible, and I think the more 'corners' you create on the site the more likely you are to start seeing certain groups of members settling into them and intimidating outsiders from going there. That would completely go against EC's 'open for all' vibe.

The most apparent problem for the idea would be how it works alongside the security features. The personal information ban is difficult to maintain when there are groups for every region that is represented by members, and there is no way the staff could monitor each and every group to make sure no members are being silly enough to post information that allows them to be traced (whether it's an address, email, full name etc). I'm not against the idea because it gives a networking type feel, I just don't really think it's effective to have staff monitor groups when they should be focusing on the support aspect of the site.

As I said, I'm not against it because of the whole social networking/facebook vibe it may give off, but I do not see how it would integrate into the sites security without requiring the staff to watch each and every group closely. Wall messages already test us enough, and I think anything more would just cause a complete burnout. If that was to happen and the security slipped then who knows what the owners would do to EC...

Although, that's my perspective only. That's not me vetoing the idea or speaking on behalf of the staff/anybody else.

well one option you can have with staff is 2 seperate sections .

super mods and admin \ -----------------------------|
social side mods ........ ..................forum mods


but just a loose idea... it would need more staff but i dont think its un do-able....

he real issue i think is what you would have... more information on lgbt groups and updates thre upon...but i dunno... the core of Ec is support and advice but then theres chat which is good but then thres the arcade that really has nothign to do with advice and support...

so ...a networking side of things adding more depth into the lgbt current events across the world would be more useful than an arcade ....not saying to get rid of arcade at all .... just makign a point.


but thats also jsut my pov.

[Just Adam]

hell its impossible to do a sodding graph >.>

[Martin]

Originally Posted by Just Adam

well one option you can have with staff is 2 seperate sections ...

/ super mods and admin \
social side mods forum mods


but just a loose idea... it would need more staff but i dont think its un do-able....

he real issue i think is what you would have... more information on lgbt groups and updates thre upon...but i dunno... the core of Ec is support and advice but then theres chat which is good but then thres the arcade that really has nothign to do with advice and support...

so ...a networking side of things adding more depth into the lgbt current events across the world would be more useful than an arcade ....not saying to get rid of arcade at all .... just makign a point.


but thats also jsut my pov.

The arcade, whilst nothing to do with support/resources, doesn't come with the security risks posed by this idea. Chat, Arcade, Chit Chat, Fun and Games are all places that members can go to chillax. It's illogical to expect people to come here and constantly focus on offering support and advice. You don't do it, I don't, and neither should anybody else. We would simply burnout, so it's nice to have various features for us to relax (so to speak).

The problem with regional pages is that the security issue is always going to be there no matter how you try and integrate it. It's one thing creating a new usergroup of staff to monitor it, but it's another to expect them to do so every day of the year. The staff system is already being discussed because it can be confusing at times, and we have seen from the Chat Moderator usergroup that moderation can be pretty weak at times. That's nothing against the chat mods, but it's expected when you rely on two staff to monitor an entire feature that is used by numerous members. You would need a much larger team to monitor a feature that would be as widely used as group pages, and that wouldn't guarantee that all personal information would be caught and removed.

Furthermore, simply adding numbers to the staff team doesn't actually solve anything. The largerr a team becomes the more work it is to maintain it, and the site is not in a position where it can have a large amount of staff accessing one place. The staff forums contain lots of sensitive information about past and present users, and it would be insane to allow anybody to access that because they are monitoring x part of the site. In order to add a new usergroup of staff you have to look at the implications it would have for the privacy of members, and at the moment it would require such extensive work to maintain that privacy that the support aspect of the site would inevitably be neglected whilst the planning and development of a new system was introduced.

I just don't see what it would be worth in the long-term considering the amount of effort it would need. As stated above, it sounds good as an idea, but implimenting it would require a lot of work, and I am not sure so much work is worth it when the feature has such a high likelihood of messing with EC's security features. Whether we hate those security measures or not, they aren't something that we can meddle with and hope that any violations will just result in the member being banned. We may just reach a point where EC's owners/legal team decide that all method of communication is to be removed (which they have wanted before) and it's a pretty slippery slope for that to happen. The only way to avoid that is to keep all violations to an absolute-minimum, and a group page feature is a high risk idea that can go against that.

[Just Adam]

i dont even care really my idea woul d be to add another bit to the forum possibly in the lgbt news section... maybe have a member of staff who looks into lgbt friendly organisations sites and communitys...jsut information. maybe have someoen responsible for having dates for noteable lgbt events an dates on a sort of Ec calander..etc...

dunno but it dont matter... it was jsu tan idea of maybe lookign at it as the OP has an interesting idea.... but .. the securityis difficult i know that but i didnt use the arcade as acomparrison of security jsut the purpose and usefulness.

anyway meh i suppose most thigns of importance gets mentioned.