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#2
12-04-2003, 07:20 PM
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Gardening Group by Where You Live.
Drucifer wrote:
Interested in discussing your Backyard Birding & Gardening activities by where you live? Then join one of the following regional group at Yahoo! I think you may have over-estimated just how many people would be interested, and how many smaller pieces you can divide them into. Look over the archives of this newsgroup, for example. I haven't counted myself, but I would be very surprised if you could find more than 100 people who've contributed more than once or twice. There may be many more lurkers that will occasionally decide to ask a question, or pipe in with an answer or an opinion now and then, but if the group wasn't as active as it is, they wouldn't bother even checking it. And this is a worldwide newsgroup, too! If you tried to divide us up into separate groups for each state, even the most active state groups wouldn't be active enough to hold much interest. The sum of the parts would be far less than the whole is. Plus there are many other more active, more established forums out there for both birding and gardening. Most are attached to websites that offer content beyond the forums. The forums that are active likely originally grew from people commenting on, and discussing the content of the site. It's difficult to start one Yahoo Group that has any level of activity. To try to start 50 or 60 similar groups at the same time isn't likely to work well no matter how much or how often you solicit members in other forums, like this newsgroup. Take a look at how Usenet has grown. (Until the unwashed learned how easy it is to create new groups that no one will bother to use, and commercial ISP's honored rogue create messages just so they could point to a higher group count than their competition, that is.) Usenet grew from general groups splintering into sub-groups only once there was enough interest in the sub-topic to sustain interest in the groups. The sudden creation of a whole bunch of groups all related to the same general topic, but divided into sub-groups usually only occurs on company-specific hierarchies (microsoft.*, for example) when they release a new product. Also, you've made the arbitrary assumption that local interest changes at the state line. To use an extreme example, some one in Texarkana, TX would have more in common with people from Arkansas or even Louisiana than they would with someone in El Paso, TX. If you had started with one all-encompassing group, regional interests would have appeared over time. And if you spun-off regional groups for those regions with enough interest, eventually they may have come to the point that they could be broken-up into sub-regions. Sure, some of those regions or sub-regions may have been easily described by a state name, but when there is, for example, a Connecticut group and a Rhode Island group, Rhode Island residents may be less likely to join the Connecticut group even if it's active, and the Rhode Island group is not. Kudos to you for trying. I don't mean to be too critical, but I hope you can appreciate one explanation as to why your dream isn't coming true, and perhaps use this information to become more successful the next time you try. -- Warren H. ========== Disclaimer: My views reflect those of myself, and not my employer, my friends, nor (as she often tells me) my wife. Any resemblance to the views of anybody living or dead is coincidental. No animals were hurt in the writing of this response -- unless you count my dog who desperately wants to go outside now. |
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#3
15-04-2003, 12:44 AM
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Gardening Group by Where You Live.
Zone groups would be a better idea......
On Sat, 12 Apr 2003 18:14:46 GMT, "Warren" wrote: Drucifer wrote: Interested in discussing your Backyard Birding & Gardening activities by where you live? Then join one of the following regional group at Yahoo! I think you may have over-estimated just how many people would be interested, and how many smaller pieces you can divide them into. Look over the archives of this newsgroup, for example. I haven't counted myself, but I would be very surprised if you could find more than 100 people who've contributed more than once or twice. There may be many more lurkers that will occasionally decide to ask a question, or pipe in with an answer or an opinion now and then, but if the group wasn't as active as it is, they wouldn't bother even checking it. And this is a worldwide newsgroup, too! If you tried to divide us up into separate groups for each state, even the most active state groups wouldn't be active enough to hold much interest. The sum of the parts would be far less than the whole is. Plus there are many other more active, more established forums out there for both birding and gardening. Most are attached to websites that offer content beyond the forums. The forums that are active likely originally grew from people commenting on, and discussing the content of the site. It's difficult to start one Yahoo Group that has any level of activity. To try to start 50 or 60 similar groups at the same time isn't likely to work well no matter how much or how often you solicit members in other forums, like this newsgroup. Take a look at how Usenet has grown. (Until the unwashed learned how easy it is to create new groups that no one will bother to use, and commercial ISP's honored rogue create messages just so they could point to a higher group count than their competition, that is.) Usenet grew from general groups splintering into sub-groups only once there was enough interest in the sub-topic to sustain interest in the groups. The sudden creation of a whole bunch of groups all related to the same general topic, but divided into sub-groups usually only occurs on company-specific hierarchies (microsoft.*, for example) when they release a new product. Also, you've made the arbitrary assumption that local interest changes at the state line. To use an extreme example, some one in Texarkana, TX would have more in common with people from Arkansas or even Louisiana than they would with someone in El Paso, TX. If you had started with one all-encompassing group, regional interests would have appeared over time. And if you spun-off regional groups for those regions with enough interest, eventually they may have come to the point that they could be broken-up into sub-regions. Sure, some of those regions or sub-regions may have been easily described by a state name, but when there is, for example, a Connecticut group and a Rhode Island group, Rhode Island residents may be less likely to join the Connecticut group even if it's active, and the Rhode Island group is not. Kudos to you for trying. I don't mean to be too critical, but I hope you can appreciate one explanation as to why your dream isn't coming true, and perhaps use this information to become more successful the next time you try. |
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