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Facebook vs. CR Society forums


Dean Pomerleau

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On the CR Survey Results Thread, Matt wrote:

 

Have you tried posting this survey to the CR group on Facebook? That's usually the most active place and has plenty of Females.  :)

 

I didn't even know there was a CR Society Facebook group until a couple days ago, and I haven't even looked at it. Here it is:

 

https://www.facebook.com/groups/CRSociety/

 

Its a private group, so you need to request to join (which I've now done). However, I generally avoid all Facebook interactions & friend requests, because I've found Facebook spams me with too much crap. But if there is an active CR Group there, its worth checking out.

 

I'm wondering what the status of this group is relative to these forums? It looks like the Admins for the group are the leaders / Board members of the CRS (Brian, James Cain, Bob Cavanaugh), and it is linked to from the Resources page of the CR Society website, so its obviously "official". But it's existence is certainly not widely publicized here, at least not lately. I seem to recall when the switch was made away from the email list, the "place" we were supposed to shift our communications to was pretty clearly portrayed to be these forums.

 

My impression is that there is a group of long-term CRers (including me) who might be even more reluctant to engage via Facebook than via these forums. Plus, although I'm a Facebook novice, I have the impression that privacy policy, persistence & searchability of information may be better on a forum than a Facebook group, but I could be wrong. Speaking of privacy and searchability, Matt wrote on the other thread:

 

I also think that it was a big mistake by not moving to forums a long time ago. Staying with the Email Lists for so long - even when better options were available - significantly impacted the growth of the CR community imo. The archives are not even indexed by Google are they? A missed opportunity to have people find CR from search engines like Google. But as I said above: most of active posters are actually on Facebook.F

 

The move away from the email list remains contentious, and is water under the bridge anyway. You are correct, as far as I know the old CR archives aren't searchable via Google. But they aren't hidden or private, you just have to search from here:

 

http://arc.crsociety.org/search.php  (A good URL to bookmark!)

 

[As an aside - Just for everyone's information (I didn't know this), Google does appear to scrape and index these forums, so it is possible to find posts here via a Google search. In fact, you can do a Google search that is limited to searching these forums by adding "site:crsociety.org" to your Google search query. Google seems to update its search results for these forums fairly often - a Google search for "CR Survey" returns the thread announcing the survey started a few days ago, but does not yet reflect the thread started yesterday on the survey results.]

 

[As another aside about useful links and information consumption tips, in case you didn't know it, it is really easy to see only what's new on these forums since your last visit, simply bookmark this link. Note - this requires that you be registered and logged in to the forums - its free and everyone should do it!]

 

James, I can see from this forum post from early this year (which I missed) that you read and engage with folks on the CRS Facebook group. Could you (or Michael or Brian - when you have a chance) explain the relationship between these forums and the Facebook group (from a practical perspective), and perhaps what is the CRS policy / best practice recommendation for member communication on one vs. the other?

 

I'd be interested in hearing what others think about the merits of CR communication via these forums vs. a 'private' Facebook group. Perhaps posting about the survey to the Facebook group and encouraging people to read about the results on these forums would not only increase the amount of survey data, but also help increase participation here!?

 

Thanks!

 

--Dean

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I also think that it was a big mistake by not moving to forums a long time ago. Staying with the Email Lists for so long - even when better options were available - significantly impacted the growth of the CR community imo. The archives are not even indexed by Google are they? A missed opportunity to have people find CR from search engines like Google.

 

Agreed that we should have switched over earlier. We had to do some housecleaning before we could make changes. Long story there, but now we're moving forward. We're working on the Google indexing issue.

 

 

But as I said above: most of active posters are actually on Facebook.

 

Mark Zuckerberg is struggling financially, and I understand people want to help him out by providing free labor to Facebook, but I'd like to encourage people to post here, instead. Two good reasons, among many: 1) you can support the CR Society, instead of Facebook (again, I understand people want to support the underdog, Facebook), and 2) Michael Rae is here, not on Facebook!

 

But, as James Cain pointed out in a private conversation, ultimately, what matters is that we have interesting discussions that move knowledge forward. That we're doing, in many forums!

 

Best, with tongue in cheek,

Brian

 

 

 

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I think the forums are great to have more lengthy and detailed discussions, but Facebook's usefulness comes in people getting quick responses. Ultimately, that's what attracts a lot of the posters on the CR group. We instantly get an alert and someone comes along as responds to it. However, let's try to get more people on here as you said.

I'll also add a link on my site to the this forum, either as a widget and/or on a resource page once I create it. I have been meaning to do it, but got caught up in lots of other things that's been taking up my time. :)

Lastly, but I think this is important... The lists felt very 'formal' - at least from my perspective. And this made me hesitant to send out emails... Anyway that could just be me! :p But I suspect others felt a similar way.

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Regarding Facebook:  I realize all kinds of people over the age of 21 are members and use it, but the image I have of it is that it is juvenile.  I do not use it, have not used it, do not plan to use it and am never likely to.  My email automatically spams anything that appears in any way associated with Facebook.

 

(Someone asked for input.  That is mine!  FWIW.)

 

Rodney.

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Regarding Facebook:  I realize all kinds of people over the age of 21 are members and use it, but the image I have of it is that it is juvenile.

 

I too have reservations about Facebook, especially wrt to privacy and spam. But it is by far the most popular social media site for middle age and older people. In fact, having a teenage daughter, I know first hand that Facebook isn't cool with the younger generation anymore. Its mostly Instagram and Snapchat for them these days. Here is a graph of social media use by age in the US:

 

social-media-age-demographics.jpg?red=at

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JFI:  When I go to the following link (suggested above):

 

http://arc.crsociety.org/search.php

 

all I get is a page that is completely blank except for the following message:

 

"Strict Standards: Non-static method Phorum_mod_flex_search::getInstance() should not be called statically in /home/cradmin/public_html/phorum5125/mods/flex_search/flex_search.php on line 860"

 

Rodney.

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