Talk:Communities

Discussion & rationale

Some of the so-called communities listed on the Main Page are hardly worthy of being included on this page, let alone have their own entry in the MHWiki. While some are truly notable (hundreds or even thousands of members, others have a relative handful at most. In addition, the pages created here read more like 9th-grade fanboy pages than actual relevant content. As such, I plan to tag many of said pages for deletion. The groups can be linked from here with neutral descriptions (with none of the "biggest and funniest"-type of rhetoric) and a simple link to the Facebook group page. This isn't the place for inside jokes, promoting a group, etc. People should be able to visit MHWiki and easily and quickly find relevant information without sorting through rubbish. IMHO, of course.

I propose that criteria be developed and followed for:

1. inclusion of a group on this page, and
2. creation of a separate page on MHWiki for detailed group info

Specifically, there should be a minimum number of group members (if entry links to a Facebook group) or a minimum number of active daily users (if entry links to a third-party website) before a group is listed or merits its own page. The numbers I have in mind are 250 for listing here and 750 for a separate page. Discussion?

--Brossow 00:47, 17 December 2008 (UTC)

Having a minimum criteria is a good idea. But the criteria could be a little more relaxed, something like 100 members for both listing and separate pages. Setting too high a number might result in smaller but better run groups being excluded. I also noticed some groups currently listed are closed groups, so the exact member numbers and activity are unknown which presents some difficulty in determining who should be included.

Another way to approach this is to categorize the communities into large and small ones, with the smaller groups getting a simple name & link.

Another issue is that of inactive groups. There has to be some criteria for removal, since communities do come and go. 2 months from the last visible group activity seems like a reasonable limit. -- Grexx 16:00, 19 December 2008 (UTC)

Even for closed groups you can see the total number of members by doing a simple search, like this one. With the total number of MH users approaching a quarter-million, I don't think it's unreasonable to require a group to have at least 250 members for mention here. That's only 1/10 of 1% of the total MH users. I firmly believe that with minimal effort and starting from scratch, I could have a group meeting this criteria in less than 24 hours. I'm not interested in wasting people's time to prove my point, but Facebook users in general and gamers in specific are natural "joiners." And speaking of closed communities, I wouldn't have a problem holding them to an even higher standard since they're (IMHO) going against the basic nature of Facebook in general and MouseHunt in particular, that of allowing people to become part of an online community. Just MHO, of course. -- B.Rossow ^talk_contr 16:40, 19 December 2008 (UTC)