Clarification Question: What frequency and activity types qualify as active participation?
I'm polls apart from Frank as I belong to quite a few groups. Some work related, some special interest related.
Why so many? In my opinion, the discussion function of the groups is superior to Answers. Whist some scour Answers for questions to answer (a laudable exercise), it doesn't have the collegiate feel that a response from a group provides. The weekly digest and "Follow discussion" function provides a superior updating mechanism to the RSS feeds from Answers. Most of the discussions are on topic - whereas in Answers, posting sometimes get made to whichever category can be found quickly.
Back to characteristics which attract me - here are some of the criteria I use to determine whether or not I try to join a group.
1. Am I in the right geographic location? - yes there are some US only groups - I'm out
2. How focused does the group seem? - as based on the number of off topic discussions and total number of discussions
3. How interesting are the discussions?
4. What is the tone of the discussions? - nothing against "black hats" (de Bono) whiners and moaners; they have their often significant places. Simply I'm more attracted to collaboration in my online time.
5. Number of users - used to look at it, but have realised that it's the type of activity rather than the size of the membership which is the deciding criteria to stay engaged.
Isn't it great that we aren't all alike?
Alison
posted 6 days ago
No comments:
Post a Comment