Any way to enhance groups?

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Permalink Reply by Little Name Atheist on October 7, 2009 at 4:56pm

Good question! I will be looking forward to hearing from people more in the know than me.

I think a forum category where people can announce their new groups, and what they're about, might be helpful.

Also, I've volunteered to do a group inventory over the winter (possibly sooner now that gardening season is upon us), because honestly... do we really need 20 groups on the same topic? I think people create them because they don't know there are already groups here. So, we end up with two ex-Catholic groups (for instance), when one would probably be adequate. More people means more discussion.

Well, hopefully...

Dallas Gaytheist has a wee blurb in his introductory and welcoming spiel about looking for groups before creating new ones, but he'd have to clone himself to post it on each incoming member's comment wall.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 7, 2009 at 5:04pm

I've had no problem adding widgets. Although, some will work and others wont. You have to do a little trial and error. I have also been thinking about polling, but haven't tried that yet. Widgets work on your home page in the text box as well. I've added visit counters (they only count the page that you refer to, so in a group that would usually be the group's "front page", URL counters, quote of the day (this is actually quote of the visit), moon phase, and others.

What specifically do you want to add? What have you tried? I think we need to get down to specifics and test them.


For examples, click on my page, or on this group 'front page': conversations in race, ethnicity, and culture.

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Permalink Reply by vjack on October 8, 2009 at 7:52am

The last one I tried to add was one of the Digg widgets from here: http://digg.com/add-digg

It did what they have all done - nothing. I cut and paste the code into the text box, but no widget appears. Maybe I just haven't found one that will work yet.

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Permalink Reply by vjack on October 8, 2009 at 8:06am

I did just find one that worked, so I must have just needed to keep trying them.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 8, 2009 at 8:59am

I think you're right. SOme are written for a specific platform, like myspace or yahoo or facebook, and it takes some experimenting to find what works here.

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on October 8, 2009 at 8:14am

Ning has done something. Widgets used to run fine - but now, Ning appears to delete any scripting or embedding you add into the group description areas. This occurred a couple of months ago - and is more than just a pain as some folks have found out. Widgets that were embedded and worked not only got deleted when you tried to update the group - but everything else you had for group descriptions as well.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 8, 2009 at 8:32am

now im reluctant to make any changes in the group descriptions. Sooner or later I'll have to give it a try.

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Permalink Reply by Sentient Biped on October 8, 2009 at 8:56am

I just copied the secular earth widget that you shared previously - here - it works fine. Must be which widgets, and where.

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Permalink Reply by Фелч Гроган on October 8, 2009 at 9:36am

this is why I made this group -

http://www.atheistnexus.org/group/thesandbox

You can make as many stuff ups as you want before committing to the real thing.

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Permalink Reply by Little Name Atheist on October 10, 2009 at 7:05pm

Thanks for the reminder felch. I"d worn out my two remaining memory cells that day.

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