OK, I have set up an initial test case:

1. Right Click on http://groups.cx/
2. <Open in new Tab> or <Open in new Window>
3. Click on support groups (this is actually http://support.groups.cx/ )
4. As you can see, it will be set up such that bread crumbs will expand leftward from the top right corner, menu navigation will continue down along the right side, and the content will fill the remainder of the window.

I still have no idea how the content will be managed.

Any suggestions?

Oh, yeah: Please also consider signing up as a member of the yahoo group -- that would make it easier for us to stay in touch during the "transition period".

Even if you think the http://groups.cx (and the associated http://group.cx groups and/or the http://wiki.cx ) will not get anywhere, it would make it easier to keep each other updated on progress). I will look into the yahoo group settings to ensure that the emount of email that comes from this will be kept to a "bare necessity" minimum.

Thanks for considering this -- and again: I am happy for each and every suggestion!! Any contributions made will be greatly appreciated!!

:D nmw

Hi nmw,

One problem I see with your groups page is that it has both adult groups and christian groups. So that will pretty much turn off everyone.

It's clear to me that the reason o/net was so much more fun than chatroom.com is because people genuflect upon entering here, if you know what I mean.

So I'd suggest picking a real life persona, it could be you, or someone you admire, and make some sort of theme out of it. I know it feels limiting from an archivist perspective, but groups are not really filing cabinets, they are contexts in which people will interact.

Ever tell a true story to your boss and then tell that same story to your nephew? Notice how it comes out completely different? That's what groups are for. They shape and mold the participants so what they create fits in the context. You want to attract people, you gotta give them a specific context they can get into. Most authors don't feel like writing in a library.

I tried contributing to www.helium.com, but it's really difficult to get into the mood when you are writing about anything for anyone and then it gets filed by topic. Wikipedia works because they have this "neutral point of view" thing which eliminates 99.9% of what you'd like to write, in other words it's a very potent context.

I agree with Dave, but we are in the beginning stages:-)

Global Health seems to be missing unless it's tucked away somewhere within.

Thanks NMW!

Thanks NMW this is a great idea.

First of all: Thank you to all 3 of you for your support!

I am going through rather difficult times (related to family), and therefore I am very grateful for your positive feedback.

Please not that (in my view) positive feedback includes the following statement (because it draws attention to something that needs attention -- even if only because it "might be", is a "hunch" or "gut feeling"). This type of feedback is invaluable because it makes me aware of my own "blind spots. Thank you, David!! And now to the statement:

Dav in Phoenix (CCAL30) said:

Hi nmw,

One problem I see with your groups page is that it has both adult groups and christian groups. So that will pretty much turn off everyone.

First of all, I don't think it would turn off either you (David) or Ravi (or a bunch of other people here at omidyar.net -- probably most of the people I have regularly interacted with here at omidyar.net are not only tolerant but even embrace "both sides now" (I think I linked to that song a while back -- I'll see if I can dig it up ;)

But secondly (and this is, I believe your point): it may actually put of something like 99% of the general population. And my guess is that your feeling is that these 99% of the general population might actually reap great profits from interacting more "openly" / "tolerantly" / etc. -- in other words: they might actually be a "target group" we should consider with utmost care.

I agree!

Perhaps the home page should ease them in to the complexities of the modern world more gently. Maybe things don't need to be quite so multi-faceted from the get go. Simplify! (a Quaker credo ;)

So let's imagine a homepage that is more "inviting" (and perhaps that also allows for an "easy" and/or "fast track" for those 99% (or large subgroups of say 33% or so) to take that "get around" the difficult issues of tolerance and stuff like that.

Perhaps it would be good to have more explanation of what the entire hub is supposed to be/do? Well, what is it supposed to be/do (my idea is to be a place where different groups can exchange ideas and [perhaps] also be "moderated" and/or "rated" [by users] in some way -- this is obviously a quite complex undertaking, and so I'm not sure if it can be done [but I'd sure like to try ;]).

Another thing would be to simplify the number of categories -- e.g.:

1. support groups
2. friends groups (perhaps better than "adult" or "singles" -- at least right on the homepage?)
3. local community groups
4. interest groups
5. everything else

Might something like that be better?

:) nmw

Ha, I misunderstood the first time round I thought this was just for transferring o.net groups somewhere not a new Internet directory.

I feel ethics and rights are missing as groups but maybe you intended these to sub groups.

I would have thought that for managing this it needs to be a wiki so that users can keep the information up-to-date.

Do not general searches fulfill this function? If I want to find 'Ecological Housing groups' I just search Goo...

Edit - cross posted with nmw; Sorry to hear of family problems Nobert, take care.

Hi Nicholas,

yes, Google (and similar generalized search engines) do serve a purpose -- and that is quite similar to the traditional white pages (so if I type in ebay into google.de then the top result is ebay.de -- in other words: google.de is like a German "white pages" directory and google.com is currently like an american "white pages" directory [as the Internet grows, google.com will actually become more of a commercial white pages directory, and google.us may become the american white pages directory]).

Link based search engines have been more/less played out.

In the future, I think there might also be a .eco (and then housing-groups.eco might be a good place to find ecological housing groups) -- but I wouldn't hold my breath on that one! ;D

Do you think "ethics" and "rights" might fit in with "advocacy" and/or "interest" groups? As you may be aware, I mostly pay attention to what people actually search for (and far more people search for "advocacy groups" and/or "special interest groups" than "rights groups" and/or "ethics groups").

Also: a wiki is also planned at http://wiki.cx

:) nmw

Edit - cross-posted with your cross-post: Thanks!! ;D

All the big internet sites I know of are the best (or second best) at one thing. There are too many competitors for any of them to take too much territory.

So from the user's point of view, what do you want this site to be best at? (Express it as something the customer wants to do, which you enable them to do faster, cheaper, easier, better...)

Thanks, David!

Yes you're absolutely right [1] -- and that is of course why the generalized search engines are behind the times (insofar as they do One Size, Fits All rankings).

Like I said above: I am more interested in what other people would like to see (in economics, this is known as demand) than in simply putting my own ideas "out there" in a "take it or leave it" fashion (the so-called supply side).

But I do not wish to evade your question -- which I guess is your sincere interest in my personal viewpoint. I have quite often mentioned what I feel is a good way to rank things, but my views also change over time.

WRT http://Groups.CX I think the primary focus is (and ought to be) groups. This means: not one group focused on one thing (which might be more appropriate under http://Group.CX ), but rather the interaction of groups, and also (to use a regrettably overused term): the "metatagging" of groups. For example: if some neighborhood group project were listed on httü://neighborhood.groups.cx then that would mean that the group listed would have some of the qualities associated with being a neighborhood group -- perhaps even a "highly rated" and/or "top ranking" (or "widely acclaimed" or "recommended by experts" or whatever) neighborhood group -- these are the kinds of issues the management team could focus on (from my point of view).

What do you think?

Oops -- I overlooked the "customer point of view" part.

Dav in Phoenix (CCAL30) said:

So from the user's point of view, what do you want this site to be best at? (Express it as something the customer wants to do, which you enable them to do faster, cheaper, easier, better...)

Users generally search for a particular kind of group -- such as a "support group" (or a "interest group", etc.). The site should help to facilitate making such connections -- and also foster connections among the groups themselves (perhaps thereby avoiding duplication and/or increasing collaboration, etc.). Does this make sense to you?

Yes. I personally would love to find groups like o/net, for instance.

A site I would probably even bookmark would be one that had a list of groups of people who had converted gas cars to electric, or groups who had gone off the grid using solar panels, or groups who had established local fruit cooperatives using people's backyards.

A website that was branded as being just about solar energy, for instance, would still be able to have a pretty full outline of the many (sub)types of groups one might be interested in (solar heating, solar lighting, solar cooking, passive solar, grid tie solutions, mobile solutions, manufacturing, salvage, etc). And it would be a fulltime job just to keep up with the contact information of these groups all over the world.

That's what I mean about not taking on too much territory. If you pick one small area, you could be best at it.

haha -- you should have put more effort into focusing on solar energy before I sold "photon" ;)

But at least you do get it: what area are you focusing on now? If you go too narrow (e.g. "local fruit cooperatives using people's back yards"), I think you may run into finding one group in Toledo, Ohio and another in Johannesburg, South Africa (or something like that). How would you deal with that?

Note that general search engine results on such topical searches are abysmal: see e.g. local fruit cooperatives (contrast that with a search for good fruit -- which also happens to be in the top 0.00004% of the results for local fruit cooperatives).

Also, looking at the types of sites you seem to be focused on, I am not entirely certain that the Internet is the best medium.

Dav in Phoenix (CCAL30) said:

A site I would probably even bookmark would be one that had a list of groups of people who had converted gas cars to electric, or groups who had gone off the grid using solar panels, or groups who had established local fruit cooperatives using people's backyards.

Many such groups would probably best meet simply by chatting with their neighbors (i.e., in their "back yards"). It seems very counter-intuitive to try to contact your next door neighbor using an Internet search engine (whether that's something as focused as Groups.CX or as generalized as Google.COM -- it doesn't really matter: just walking next door and ringing the doorbell seems like a much simpler approach that would also seem to lead to more effective results [and more quickly, too ;]).

So I really do not understand what your problem is: if you only want to network locally in you immediate neighborhood, I don't think you need to do anything on the WWW (note that exchanging email addresses is -- strictly speaking -- not part of the WWW [as email and the www are two distinct operations]).

Maybe you can explain how/why you feel it is so important to you to focus on such hyperlocal groups? I do not wish to go so far as to say "hyperlocal is anathema to the internet", but I do feel it is a rather difficult nut to crack (this is also my main reservation with ned.com -- namely there the approach is to network locally [in meatspace] and then to move online [and I simply do not see this happening on a wide scale]).

That's what I mean about not taking on too much territory. If you pick one small area, you could be best at it.

Yes, and again -- my focus is on helping users find what they're looking for (e.g. "support groups", "youth groups", etc.).

What I was thinking of regarding fruit coops was organised groups that share fruit with their neigbors. Maybe you're right, very few exist at the moment. Maybe lots exist but none are online. I guess I'm just saying I wish there were lots of groups like that, and I wish they all had websites, and I wish I could see the list of websites all on one page.

Here's the kind of site I'm talking about: http://www.ic.org/

On the one hand, this is very focused, only intentional communities (which covers less than one out of 10,000 people, I'd guess). On the other hand, they manage to get lots of listings because they include "ecovillages, cohousing, residential land trusts, communes, student co-ops, urban housing cooperatives, alternative communities, and other projects where people strive together with a common vision".

If one of those became really popular, like say, suddenly there were 5000 active cohousing groups, that would probably split the website and cohousing would have its own directory, organised by all the subtypes of cohousing.

When I'm looking at ic.org, what I'm looking for is

1. A place to live
2. People who like living that way, to share ideas with (even if I don't live with them)
3. A place to advertise my own intentional community
4. Information and resources that might be posted there for the benefit of people who are interested in this (like if congress were considering outlawing intentional communities, I'd expect to find out where to send a letter asking them not to.)

Yes, well maybe it might be interesting for you to focus on "intentional communities" (if that is what you care about). [1] I expect many different types of community will someday be listed (with information about each community) at http://communitys.info/ -- but that is not the focus here.

Of course there might be a very strong overlap with http://local-community.groups.cx / -- so perhaps you should consider to what extent participation in that area might "make sense" WRT your interests. If you wish to focus on housing issues, then I also have such names. But all of these individual sites are not the focus of what the management of Groups.CX is about -- even though many such groups might be listed on the site.

Debra A. Hayes (CCAL30) said:

Global Health seems to be missing unless it's tucked away somewhere within.

Yes, I agree (I overlooked your very valid [but brief ;] observation)!!

The way it is (now), I guess it would be listed "under" http://support.groups.cx (since that is what people actually search for when looking for such information. "Health" has kind of been "taken over" by the "healthcare" industry ("providers" such as medicine, insurance, etc.). Perhaps this is why people looking for "group" solutions to their "health issues" do not normally use "health" as a search term (though they may use it for general health information [however, the term is so broad that it is simply too noisy for most cases -- one exception being "mental health"])

Would love to hear more about what "health professionals" think about this!

:) nmw

Upon researching this a little more, I do feel that you have a valid point after all. Apparently, "advocacy groups" may indeed be a high volume term, but considering that there are such an incredible number of different rights, it may very well be that summing these long-tail searches (re: different kinds/types of rights) may indeed result in a rather strong demand of "rights groups" (even though that generic term might be somewhat awkward).

Personally, my inclination would be to list these various "rights advocacy" groups singly (i.e. to list them) under http://advocacy.groups.cx (that link is presently still not live -- but perhaps I can load something up soon to show what I mean [it would probably look quite similar to the http://support.groups.cx example]).

Would love to hear and pro/con arguments to this approach.

These are indeed the types of issues the management team is supposed to resolve -- and I envision the management team consisting of many "subject" experts, and perhaps also some "collaboration" experts, "business" experts, "development" experts, etc.

Does this make sense? Or what might be a better way to manage such a collaborative project? What kinds of "ground rules" would people expect?

nmw said:

Do you think "ethics" and "rights" might fit in with "advocacy" and/or "interest" groups? As you may be aware, I mostly pay attention to what people actually search for (and far more people search for "advocacy groups" and/or "special interest groups" than "rights groups" and/or "ethics groups").

Nicholas Bentley (CCAL30) said:

Ha, I misunderstood the first time round I thought this was just for transferring o.net groups somewhere not a new Internet directory.

This is indeed the idea behind the group/groups portfolio: namely, that individual groups could "house" their groups activity at http://foo.group.cx and then these individual groups could be listed in the http://groups.cx directory (however: if groups find it better to group elsewhere, then that doesn't mean they couldn't be listed with that address -- a http://foo.group.cx location would just be an available option [if desired])

My point was that if "Intentional Communities" was one of your headings, then I'd probably want the link to take me to http://www.ic.org or some similar list. (Actually, I meant this page http://directory.ic.org/iclist/ .)

I'm wondering if that's what you are building, or if a link like "Intentional Communities" would bring me to a list of sites like http://www.ic.org.

You know, how many levels of organisation are you going to manage, before you hand the user off to someone else.

David, you seem to be very keen on ic.org -- and I have no problem with that. Can you explain to me how you feel that is related to a collaboratively developed directory of groups (the topic of this discussion)?

It's not that I want to nitpick on terminology. We could also call the proposed site a network of online communities. From what I have read about ic.org (and/or intentional communities), these are two quite distinct topics.

Hopefully, you (or someone else) can explain to me how they are related and/or why such a relationship might be an important aspect to consider.

I am sorry for the confusion. I was just using ic.org as an example. I could have used bankrate.com, or cars.com, but those particular sites aren't great examples either.

Here's my question. When you activate the links on your groups.cx page, where will each one take us? Like for instance, the "music groups" link. Will that take us to another page that looks kind of like the first page, but has links like:

• rock n roll groups
• musicology associations
• musical instrument repair guilds
• nonprofit orchestras
• recording artist unions

etc. ?

Or instead, will it take us to something like http://launch.dir.groups.yahoo.c om/dir/Music/For_Musicians

(I mean someone else's, in this case Yahoo's, list of music groups)? Imagine for a second that that yahoo page was a really awesome list of hundreds of groups you really were interested in (that's why I used ic.org as an example, they really have done an incredible amount of screening to give you valid up-to-date info about all those communities, whereas most of yahoo's music groups are going to be dead links.)

Dav in Phoenix (CCAL30) said:

Here's my question. When you activate the links on your groups.cx page, where will each one take us?

First of all, this is something the management team will decide -- I do not wish to make such decisions alone and/or by myself.

Like for instance, the "music groups" link. Will that take us to another page that looks kind of like the first page, but has links like:

• rock n roll groups
• musicology associations
• musical instrument repair guilds
• nonprofit orchestras
• recording artist unions

etc. ?

I hope and wish that this might involve the opinions of "music group" experts -- for example, people who create music, or people who try to interpret it,... -- perhaps even the less than always beloved "critics" (?) :)

Or instead, will it take us to something like http://launch.dir.groups.yahoo.c om/dir/Music/For_Musicians

(I mean someone else's, in this case Yahoo's, list of music groups)? Imagine for a second that that yahoo page was a really awesome list of hundreds of groups you really were interested in (that's why I used ic.org as an example, they really have done an incredible amount of screening to give you valid up-to-date info about all those communities, whereas most of yahoo's music groups are going to be dead links.)

Yes, I do believe Yahoo maintains a quite good (and widely respected) project to categorize information (as does DMoz) -- however, both of these organizations are also drive by different agendas (and neither of them are very open about it, even though DMoz maintains it were an "open directory project")

That issue aside, the focus here would be on interaction and collaboration among groups -- and the methods we might set up for interaction and/or collaboration will also be a key focal point for the management team to give attention to from the get go.

Perhaps such a "code of conduct" (and related tools) also touch on the aspect that Nicholas touched on above (this time taking a slightly different view/interpretation of Nicholas' remarks): the fact that there is no declaration of ethics, goals, missions, etc. perhaps makes http://Groups.CX feel like a vacant lot -- and I agree. But a virgin vacant lot in the center of town -- isn't that an opportunity to make good things happen?

One other thing (related to some of the comments I have made about general search engines, above): Some of the more popular engines have started to weight old sites more heavily than new sites. Some people might find this reasonable -- I still find it rather anachronistic (and in order to understand that bite behind this comment, you should also understand that I am quite conservative [e.g. I feel Edmund Burke had many very insightful remarks concerning the French Revolution]). Using such a metric you might want to look here in order to find a good word processor! Algorithmic search will always be a rather rough estimate compared to the opinions of experts in their respective fields (and as you say: ic.com seems to be maintained by experts in the "intentional communities" field). I would say that the field of focus for Groups.CX should be group interaction and/or collaborative development -- I have before referred to this as a "groups exchange" (and creating such a "market" -- which is more/less simply an information resource -- is perhaps the crux of the matter [and the code of conduct and/or ethics should mainly serve to facilitate the flow of information])

Does this help?

I have started posting at http://yahoo.Groups.CX -- see e.g. the Groups.CX community features wishlist discussion thread.

this is something the management team will decide

Who is on the management team?

I'm still having trouble picturing the user of your site, are they looking for a group to join? Or one to hire, or work for? Or one to collaborate with the group they are already in?

In any of those cases, what the user is going to want to know is whether the group they ultimately find using that site is open to them joining, employing, working for, or collaborating with. How are you going to get that info?

The problem with the yellow pages is if I want to buy a shower curtain it doesn't tell me that walmart, target, ikea, home depot, sears, and bed bath & beyond all carry them (to name some nearby stores to me). If there is a store called "Shower Curtains R Us" 20 miles across town then that's where the yellow pages would send me.