We've reorganised the groups on WriteWords to better reflect how members use the site. If you already belong to any groups they will automatically appear on the groups home page, and the remaining list is now organised by 'busyness', so the busiest groups appear first in the main list. If a group becomes inactive and has no activity for a month, it automatically closes down. If there has been only a little activity it appears first in the warning list lower down the page.

We'll soon be adding a new feature to allow members to create their own groups. Any member will be able to suggest the group, and then if four other members subscribe to the group it will automatically go live.

We hope these changes mean the groups system can remain fresh, healthy and responsive to the changing needs of members into the future.

I think that's great, David, comprehensive and well laid out - although i still feel the activity levels you allow are too generous - eg Intimate Moments is described as limited acitivity but there's been nothing for two months - very limited indeed.

As you said though, this is all new and it's a matter of seeing how things go. Maybe this lay-out will motivate some groups into action.

I think the new groups page looks great. I am curious though as to how the number of group members is calculated. For example, on the groups page it says Beginners has 24 members, but in the group there are only 20. It's not important now but it might be if more people want to join. Maybe we have "Mystery Members" along the lines of "Mystery Shoppers"!

Mand

Thanks for pointing that out Mand- tomorrow's work!
Casey - Intimiate moments in fact should have been showing as closed because there were no posts in the past month, another bug corrected, thanks!

Ah, okay!

Thanks David - I like the new layout

Sarah

Brilliant, thank-you.
All good.
G

David, that looks good. One thing - could this status be reflected in the bar on the right side of the Writers' Forum page - because it still looks really cluttered with groups that no longer exist.
Susiex

I may be wrong but it looks like, on the groups page, "last activity" applies only to postings in the group forums, and not to comments on uploaded work. If this is true, isn't there a danger that groups where people tend to lean towards critiquing rather than chatting will show as inactive? Looking at the list on the groups page, new members may be put off groups that they percieve as being inactive when, in fact, there is a lot going on in the group. Just a thought.
Mand

Mand it should update for comments too - can you see any that look that that hasn't happened?

Certainly it happened with Beginners this morning. After posting this comment I dipped into a couple of other groups at random and it seems to have happened in Short Story 2 and Writing for young Adults - haven't checked them all though!

Thanks a lot, I'll look into it

I think this problem has been resolved now, thanks for bringing it up

The 'propose a new group' functionality is now live at http://www.writewords.org.uk/groups/

Hi David,
I'll understand if it turns out to be a lot of work but...

For the new "propose a group" function, would it make sense to have a comment thread attached? EG: Supposing, to pluck an example, Optimist had proposed an Intensive Critique group and I wanted to make a query about the rules, but that query might be relevant to other potential members, it might be quicker doing it in a public thread on the application page.

Just a thought.
G