2011 Groups Update Thread (Edit: Video Added)

Coach Patrick

Folks-

 

RnPnD here with a pretty significant update notice regarding Groups inside Endurance Nation. Over the last four years as we have grown, the Groups have been a part of what we do as a Team, but always second to the forums. We are changing this as of Monday, March 7th so that the Groups will officially become standalone entities...here’s more info to give you some perspective.



What This Means for You

The groups will no longer be on our massive forum landing page. Instead, they will live on a new Groups page that contains your groups in concise fashion with links to explore each of them more deeply as well as suggestions to new groups and more.



How groups work won’t really change. How you find groups won’t change. Where you go to access your groups will change, but we think you’ll quickly adapt.  The biggest change is the move from “Everything everyone says is instantly broadcast to all of EN” to “You can choose exactly where you want to put your question, information and content.”



The Old Groups

You found them on the groups page, but once you joined your groups, could just go to the forums and click “Not Read” to see everything that’s going on inside your world. Notifications and posts from your group showed up on the Dashboard, and more likely than not you replied to them right there. Maybe you were even savvy enough to use Daniel’s latest upgrade to select who saw your updates -- the group, your friends, or everyone.



The New Groups

Beginner Monday, March 7th, you’ll access your groups (and new ones) through a revised Groups landing page. All the same good info will show up in your Dashboard, and you can go back, back, back in time there to see all the updates you want. Thanks to the new architecture, anyone can create a new group on their own and RnP just moderate. Each group will have a Dashboard (that also shows up on the main dashboard of all group members) as well as a Discussion place (the mini group forums). This will all look cleaner as it won’t show up on the forum page as two separate forums but will be easily accessible from your new groups page...unless of course you already saw the note/info in your main dashboard and replied to it.

 

The Official Video: Watch How It All Works Here.

Why We Made this Change

With TeamEN firmly above the 600 member mark, we are officially in a place where the constant stream of info and dialogue in the forums can be overwhelming. We see the groups as the next logical extension of the Team -- just as folks band together each year in an OutSeason group, we think more people will use Race Groups and create other affinity groups to maintain their own subset of friends/contacts inside EN.



We assume this change will be somewhat challenging as it will be new. We’d like you to give it some time as we believe this is the right long-term decision. When we go live with the change on Monday, we’ll followup right away with another email confirming the change, and a screencast to walk you through how it all works.



If you have problems or feedback with the new Groups format, please email us at support@endurancenation.us.



Thanks!



RnPnD

Barbara Spitler

Rich, Patrick, and Daniel, thanks for ALL that you do to keep our team on the cutting edge, and continuously improving our methods to communicate! I feel certain I can say that I speak for everyone on the team. You guys work your butts off, and we appreciate it!

jburbatt

Ok, so I created a group (Muncie 70.3 2011). And everything looks good, but when I go to post a new topic in the Discussions Forum I get the following even though I am clearly logged in. I tried logging out and then back in to see if that would fix it, but I still get the message below. I should note that even though this message appears there is no login dialogue to the left, it's just blank. But my stats, etc. are shown verifying that I am still logged in.
-----------------------
Thanks so much for visiting Endurance Nation. As an online team of over 500 Ironman and 70.3 triathletes, we have placed all of our membership resources behind a password protected wall.

If you are a member...simply login with your info to the left.
If you are interested...you can create a FREE Five Day Trial Membership by simply clicking here. This will give you access to almost the entire site.
If you want more info...consider signing up for one of our Free online seminars for more information.
Thanks and we'll see you online or at the races!

Rich & Patrick
Your Endurance Nation Coaches

Unknown

Thanks Jennifer - I tried it as me, and also signed in as you and did not have trouble. Can you try again? If you have trouble please verify that your URL is http://members.endurancenation.us and maybe try to clear your cache?

Thanks for trying it out.

jburbatt

I just came back and now it works. Very random! I did check the URL to make sure I wasn't on the old one.

Thanks for checking it out for me!!

Coach Patrick

Thanks Barb, and thanks Jennifer for testing us out!

mancona

Hey P,

I understand what you are trying to do and will adjust, but one suggestion...

I rely on the "not read" view to quickly check in on the forums. In fact, I simply have that page bookmarked and avoid pretty much everything else so I can quickly check in between meetings at work, etc.

Now that you made this change it seems like I can't view more than half the threads in my "not read" list. I click on a thread that looks intresting and just get another page that says I need to log in.

Would it be possible to either:
- add the group name to each thread instead of just having a ton of "general discussion" so we can quickly see what group it is in
- group the not read threads by groups or sub forums
- or filter the not read list so it only shows threads from groups we are in

I guess I could join every group, but that kind of defeats the purpose of what you are trying to do.

Thanks!

BTW ... Happy Birthday!

Nemo Brauch

X2 what Matt said. :-)

jetskr

X3 what Matt said.

I just worry about great insight and discussions that would benefit all of us getting hidden away in a group discussion.

Steven Ford

UGH not digging this, gonna have to figure it out.

pgiesin

I agree with Steven, just not getting the point of the Groups. I know that the forums, at times, can generate a large number of posts. However, I really don't mind wading through them. You never know when you will find something useful, as a matter of fact it is quite often. I feel we are now creating sub-groups within EN. I will most likely join every group just so I don't miss anything.

Just my humble $0.02,
Pete

Coach Patrick

Folks, please work with me on this one...technically you aren't missing out on anything you are a part of, because it would (A) be in your dashboard or (B) be in your group when you went there. Now if you aren't part of a group, and that group decides not to put their boston marathon training advice on the general boards, then you have to trust that either (A) that group or (B) the coaches will take that nugget and put it up in the wiki for reference. Also, remember if you are friends with someone, and they post an update, you will see it regardless of the group because you'll see their friend updates.

I appreciate that you folks who are on the boards, don't mind wading. But the 80/20 rule applies here too...there's about 400 folks who only check in once a week, and for them the forums are overkill...we made the change to the group infrastructure to allow the site to perform well, to allow people to group themselves around their races, and to keep the overall forums clean.

I will absolutely talk to daniel about figuring out how to display "not read" threads by forum or group name...that would be helpful.

Keep in mind this is a test...we have had almost 20 new groups made with members signing up...so some folks are digging it.

Sorry to be so short, out the door with the girls and they are literally bouncing off the walls!

Patrick

mancona

Thanks P, great explaination. Thanks for adding the update to the "not read" page to the list as I think that will make it much easier for those of us that use the not read option.

Nemo Brauch

I will absolutely talk to daniel about figuring out how to display "not read" threads by forum or group name...that would be helpful.

Thanks P- that will really help fix most of the issues.

tuckerm

I have a couple thoughts I'd like to share.

I agree with Matt, Nemo and the rest of the foks that having a group name along with the the topic on the "not read" tab is needed.  It is frustrating to click onto an interesting topic only to be told we are not a member of the group.

Now the worries about missing information is the one that is puzzling.  We still have the main forum threads where folks will ask their big questions to get the rest of EN to contribute.  So the general information in EN should still be open to everyone IMHO.

I will say this, I can't remember how the Groups were permissioned last year but I think it was the same way?  Am I wrong?  I very well may be.  So if I am correct it would seem that nothing has really changed except the location of the groups.  If I am correct things should be fine shortly. 

Ok I looked and it seems like I am wrong, or at least now the 2010 groups are available for everyone's viewing now.  So we can't see what the other groups are doing unless we join every group.  This sounds like a lot of work.  Why would people not in the group want to see what was going on?  I can understand a later IM group wanting to see how the earlier groups fared with say with the Big Day, Race Rehearsals, etc.  Makes perfect sense to me. 

So how do we solve this?  Maybe we can make it possible to post threads from the Groups into the General Forum?  Give the groups a little general structure like in the OS where you have a thread for each week, and say separate threads for Big Days and RRs?  This way the entire thread can be posted over to the General Forum. 

Also there may be some great nuggets that come out in the Group discussions.  We have race captains, why not forum captains?  Anything they see or a WSM sees of greater value to the greater EN can then be posted to the General Forum.

Anyway, just some ramblings that are going through my slightly ADD mind.

tuckerm

Another thought I had about the groups. When I go to "My Groups" it lists all my groups. Only problem is that it lists the oldest ones first. Any chance to flip that? Would be much more convenient to not have to scroll and/or switch pages. Remember, it's all about ROI!

GMAN 19030

I'm a member of only one group - the IMTX group that I created. When I go to My Groups I get nothing, nada, zilch. Then I have to go find it which is a pain in the rear. I am a member of the group according to the group page and I can see all the activity. It seems there is a potential glitch where the group doesn't show up in the creator's group list.  I did join another group to test it and that group showed up in My Groups but still no IMTX group.

Lori Ames

I have the same issue.  i am a member of two groups (KS & LV) but only KS shows up in My Groups.

Unknown

Lori and Bob - I will check it out.

Unknown

@Lori and @Bob - you should be good to go now. Thanks for bring this up.

GMAN 19030

It's there now. Thanks for fixing the hamster wheel.

Steve West

Something new today. several email notifications have sent me to the Members tab. It started today and has happened on a small percentage of the emails I have clicked thru.

This is the last one that did that..... See below:

Kevin Hill has added the following comment:

so Coach P - those compression socks, you actually running in then in public or just using for recovery in the privacy of your own home... bet the extra sleep helped a lot too - congrats!

Follow the link below to see the comment:
http://members.endurancenation.us/MyAccount/Profile/tabid/104/asuid/5/Default.aspx#13059

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