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 Administrative / General / 1638
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Subject: 
Re: All UK Groups subscribed?
Newsgroups: 
lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.admin.general
Date: 
Thu, 13 May 1999 08:57:41 GMT
Viewed: 
190 times
  
[Pardon me for the apparent harsh tone -- it's not actually harsh -- what
follows is a very serious question, not a wise-crack...]

How could someone possibly find a tiny local group and manage to post to it,
yet not realise that there is a main UK group?  How could someone thereby
come to the false impression that there is no UK LEGO community?

Very easily I'd say - that's happened to me at first. When I was new to
lugnet one of the first things I did was look for local groups near to me
- I found the
section for my part of the UK - I think it was the London list and found it was
virtually empty. I may have looked at a couple of nearby areas - I can't
remember as it was a while ago. I found almost no traffic, concluded that
there couldn't be many UK people on lugnet, and never looked at the local
lists again for ages. I think the only reason I later on noticed the
lugnet.loc.uk list was because of a message I read that had been cross-posted
there and to somewhere I was subscribed to.

The point is, you could easily not notice there is no main UK community/list
because:

(a) the people who are going to be looking round for this sort of list
are likely to
be people fairly new to lugnet. These people will be very unfamiliar with
the layout of the site - they might not be that familiar with the internet
as a whole anyway - so they're not going to notice things that are
blindingly obvious to more experienced users.

(b) Once you've found a local group, there's no reason to assume that there
is a country wide group as well, is there!
So you're hardly going to look for one...
If you see a list for a local group first,
then you're probably going to think that that's how the groups are arranged.
Period.

If this question has any answer other than "it's not possible," then we have
a problem that needs to be solved with some careful thought, so let's first
figure out why/how they would miss seeing the main UK group and then let's
figure out how to help them find it -- while at the same time making sure
that they understand it's still OK to post to a tiny loc group if that's the
most appropriate place.

I'd suggest putting some information up on the page that lists all the groups
- and possibly on the pages that list all the messages in each local group.
I'd have to say for the UK I'd seriously consider just removing all the local
groups anyway. They may be useful in a couple of years time. At the moment,
they're not - though it was a nice thought having them there. (Someone - Todd,
I assume, must have spent ages going through a map of the UK to find out all
the places - which is quite impressive) :)

Simon
http://www.SimonRobinson.com



Message has 1 Reply:
  What little loc groups are best for
 
(...) OK, so crossposting is one way that people can find the big group from the smaller groups. BTW, do you remember why you never bothered to check out the main loc.uk group initially (don't worry, no one is going to laugh or criticise...just want (...) (26 years ago, 14-May-99, to lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.admin.general)

Message is in Reply To:
  Re: All UK Groups subscribed?
 
(...) [Pardon me for the apparent harsh tone -- it's not actually harsh -- what follows is a very serious question, not a wise-crack...] How could someone possibly find a tiny local group and manage to post to it, yet not realise that there is a (...) (26 years ago, 13-May-99, to lugnet.loc.uk, lugnet.admin.general)

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