User Groups

[Aschorren]

Hey MC-Market community,

I'm creating this thread in order to suggest the implementation of user groups throughout the forum. As this marketplace has evolved, numerous teams and organizations have been formed in order to meet the demand for services and goods. User groups would allow those teams and organizations to officially and effectively brand themselves throughout the website and communicate in an on-site environment.

What is a user group?

A user group is a group formed by a community member for other community members. User groups are organizations within the community.

What would be the advantage of belonging to a user group?

1. Branding

Users in a user group would receive a banner under their name, similar to the Premium and Supreme banners, with an icon, group name, and color of their choice. With official and clear branding of the user group, the group is promoted with every post a user makes and benefits from a sense of official significance.

Banner Examples

2. Organization

Each user group would have its' own section within a subforum called Groups. In this subforum, only members of a group can post and the leaders of the group can moderate their group's section. These sections can be used to recruit group members, discuss updates to the group's organization, show off recent projects, and socialize within the group.

3. Promotion

Custom banners, individual sub forums, and official on-site leadership lead to great promotion for an organization. User groups would have an increase in interest and traffic for their organization.

How would one create a user group?

Users can submit applications to the MC-Market leadership team with the concept behind their group, their group name, their desired group color, and their desired group icon. If approved by the MC-Market leadership team, users would pay MC-Market a formation fee and a smaller fee each month to continue running the group.

Benefits

Users

1. Increased business for MC-Market organizations
2. Increased organization for MC-Market organizations
3. Promotional opportunities for MC-Market organizations
4. Official branding for MC-Market organizations
5. Improved sense of community

MC-Market Leadership Team

1. Improved site traffic
2. Improved user experience
   
3. Increased user post rate
4. Increased user bounce rate
5. Increased revenue
6. Improved SEO

Improved user experience, improved branding, and improved organization.

Let's implement user groups and together enhance the great MC-Market experience.

 

[Ivain]

What you're basically suggesting is that we turn this site into a superforum with lots of little subforums for separate organisations and teams?
Also, how does sequestering off users to their own private forums increase a sense of community?
Also, you're claiming this will increase site traffic and a number of other site statistics. Mind elaborating on how? Will it be because now instead of 1 or 2 representatives of teams, we'll have the whole teams in those subforums?

This feels very much like reddit tbh, except it's got MCM as supersite. Not sure if I'd be the least interested, this community doesn't even come CLOSE to how friendly the reddit community can be, yet it exceeds some of the worst subreddits I've seen in toxicity at some points.

 

[Jad]

I had this exact idea and stated it on another thread here, it honestly seems like you just took all ideas from that thread.

Anyway, this idea has already been denied.
http://www.mc-market.org/threads/174045

 

[Ivain]

I had this exact idea and stated it on another thread here, it honestly seems like you just took all ideas from that thread.

Anyway, this idea has already been denied.
http://www.mc-market.org/threads/174045

I knew it was familiar

 

[Jad]

I knew it was familiar

As soon as I saw the idea of the tags and group pages, I knew I had said it before.

 

[IGEnthusiast]

I like this idea, but rather than have monthly fees to keep the group running, a one-time fee would probably be better.

 

[Justis]

I like that users can have two tags, and we know what their names will be.
Even my four staff tags are a bit noisy. Adding a fifth tag to my account would be insane.
However, that's just one user.
A new tag for every single user, with infinite possible names creates even more noise (especially because the names will be different); looking more and more like our competitors and their "Dogey squad" and "Butternuggets" tags.

You try and solve the issue of users creating a mess out of this unlimited usergroup suggestion of yours by requiring staff manual approvement. I am very much against implementing unnecessary manual-labor requiring systems here on a site of our size, with the prospect of growing. Knowing first-hand, as a resource mod, the consequences of staff members not being on to turn the gears of that system.
Staff members should generally be here to moderate poor content and support users with questions and fixing things they don't have access to; not fill in as a fully functioning system. The site should otherwise be able to run itself. The more systems we implement that break that, the more vulnerable our site becomes and the more stress on our staff team. Eventually leading us to needing to add more members simply because we've overburdened ourselves with unnecessary work; and on multiple occasions I have expressed my desire for a small tight knit staff team with fast and few communication channels enabling us to work better, more as one, as a team.
You're also requiring more personal judgement by requiring moderation like this; and again, as a member of the very small resource mod team, I'm familiar with the consequences of differences of opinions, and the conflicts and drama it can cause. I'm lucky that Myiume and I are the only members of our team and we're pretty much on the same page most of the time when it comes to the resource tasks. However, the mod team always has disagreements, as does any large group.
The last thing we need is users picking up on those disagreements when they want to create a new user group, and forming hate/love, good/bad, fair/biased claims and rumors against our staff members. I've seen it here, and I've seen it on other forums. It's not pretty, and it's a result of systems requiring the personal decision of a person instead of an automated system; unless the criteria can be extremely simplified so that opinions can't play a significant part, however, this massive suggestion you're making doesn't seem like one that can be simplified so easily.
I'd like to keep the actions requiring that staff members making personal calls be minimized to what's necessary as much as possible, and this suggestion of yours simple isn't necessary.

This suggestion separates our community further under visibly glorified labels and sections. Putting groups on a pedestal, and their 'leaders' at the head. There's a reason we disbanded the advertisement and discussion of external groups and communities. It's for the protection of our users.
We want our members to be regarded as equals, because we are equals. No person part of one group is better, no person in a part of another group is any worse. Supreme and Premium being exceptions because they are attained by a small sum of money and otherwise say nothing about the user other than they didn't purchase a specific rank.
Groups like this imply infinite possible meanings, especially depending on the purpose of the group and the members brought into it.
Allowing this would undermine the entire purpose of the group/community disbanding rule and would without a doubt spawn more hate and separation within our community.

Yes, this would bring in more money, and allow some people to take attention from the 'normal' members and give it to themselves. However, the ad placement and stickies we have, are pretty much the limit for me, for how I'd feel comfortable with our members monetarily giving themselves advantages over the rest of the community.
There's a moral line we need to draw, so that we don't become a pay to win attention site.

This suggestion is a big red flag of trouble in my eyes, and not something I'd want to risk implementing into the functioning of our site.

 

[Satan]

a competitor forum tried putting in user groups and it sorta failed, but supposedly they're recreating it or something to make it better. Anyways, with MCM's active and huge userbase im sure user groups could be used well and yes do have reason to promote businesses. MCM could even profit from selling user groups (sorry if this was suggested I didn't read the OP too carefully)

 

[Ajdin]

HF does this and it looks extremely skiddy and unprofessional. No thanks.

 

[Overlord]

HF does this and it looks extremely skiddy and unprofessional. No thanks.

Where do you think the idea came from? His post is an exact duplicate of that. Did you think he came up with it himself?

He wants a HF-like site. Pay for groups, buy-ins, all that bs.

 

[Phewo]

I like that users can have two tags, and we know what their names will be.
Even my four staff tags are a bit noisy. Adding a fifth tag to my account would be insane.
However, that's just one user.
A new tag for every single user, with infinite possible names creates even more noise (especially because the names will be different); looking more and more like our competitors and their "Dogey squad" and "Butternuggets" tags.

You try and solve the issue of users creating a mess out of this unlimited usergroup suggestion of yours by requiring staff manual approvement. I am very much against implementing unnecessary manual-labor requiring systems here on a site of our size, with the prospect of growing. Knowing first-hand, as a resource mod, the consequences of staff members not being on to turn the gears of that system.
Staff members should generally be here to moderate poor content and support users with questions and fixing things they don't have access to; not fill in as a fully functioning system. The site should otherwise be able to run itself. The more systems we implement that break that, the more vulnerable our site becomes and the more stress on our staff team. Eventually leading us to needing to add more members simply because we've overburdened ourselves with unnecessary work; and on multiple occasions I have expressed my desire for a small tight knit staff team with fast and few communication channels enabling us to work better, more as one, as a team.
You're also requiring more personal judgement by requiring moderation like this; and again, as a member of the very small resource mod team, I'm familiar with the consequences of differences of opinions, and the conflicts and drama it can cause. I'm lucky that Myiume and I are the only members of our team and we're pretty much on the same page most of the time when it comes to the resource tasks. However, the mod team always has disagreements, as does any large group.
The last thing we need is users picking up on those disagreements when they want to create a new user group, and forming hate/love, good/bad, fair/biased claims and rumors against our staff members. I've seen it here, and I've seen it on other forums. It's not pretty, and it's a result of systems requiring the personal decision of a person instead of an automated system; unless the criteria can be extremely simplified so that opinions can't play a significant part, however, this massive suggestion you're making doesn't seem like one that can be simplified so easily.
I'd like to keep the actions requiring that staff members making personal calls be minimized to what's necessary as much as possible, and this suggestion of yours simple isn't necessary.

This suggestion separates our community further under visibly glorified labels and sections. Putting groups on a pedestal, and their 'leaders' at the head. There's a reason we disbanded the advertisement and discussion of external groups and communities. It's for the protection of our users.
We want our members to be regarded as equals, because we are equals. No person part of one group is better, no person in a part of another group is any worse. Supreme and Premium being exceptions because they are attained by a small sum of money and otherwise say nothing about the user other than they didn't purchase a specific rank.
Groups like this imply infinite possible meanings, especially depending on the purpose of the group and the members brought into it.
Allowing this would undermine the entire purpose of the group/community disbanding rule and would without a doubt spawn more hate and separation within our community.

Yes, this would bring in more money, and allow some people to take attention from the 'normal' members and give it to themselves. However, the ad placement and stickies we have, are pretty much the limit for me, for how I'd feel comfortable with our members monetarily giving themselves advantages over the rest of the community.
There's a moral line we need to draw, so that we don't become a pay to win attention site.

This suggestion is a big red flag of trouble in my eyes, and not something I'd want to risk implementing into the functioning of our site.

Dont forget, thats assuming that you join the group, I believe that these groups are invite only by the owners.

 

[Ivain]

Dont forget, thats assuming that you join the group, I believe that these groups are invite only by the owners.

Yes, and how many groups will there be? What would be the standard set for creating the groups? Would it be anyone who paid for them? we'd have dozens then.
Would there be some other criteria? There'll still be people trying to make as many as possible. We've already got enough little gangs and squads on this site without officially sanctifying them.

 

[Phewo]

Yes, and how many groups will there be? What would be the standard set for creating the groups? Would it be anyone who paid for them? we'd have dozens then.
Would there be some other criteria? There'll still be people trying to make as many as possible. We've already got enough little gangs and squads on this site without officially sanctifying them.

There would a specific amount of groups set out given/sold to individuals, these users would create the tags and they could invite people to their groups or allow people to "buy-in". After that they could either sell the group, keep it, or do anything with the group. Its just a fun, simple, extra addon. There wouldnt be problem with it, nor would there be a problem without it.

 

[Ivain]

Fun, but with an option to buy in? Sorry, that sounds almost exactly like the extreme pay2win servers that were polluting the minecraft community before mojang forbade pay2win mechanics in general (there were non-extreme servers that were ok, but not as many as there should have been).

 

[Jaii]

I dislike this, it seems like it'll turn into some teams of people that think they're above everyone else and more superior.

Also, as stated above already it's been denied previously.

 

[Mick]

I like that users can have two tags, and we know what their names will be.
Even my four staff tags are a bit noisy. Adding a fifth tag to my account would be insane.
However, that's just one user.
A new tag for every single user, with infinite possible names creates even more noise (especially because the names will be different); looking more and more like our competitors and their "Dogey squad" and "Butternuggets" tags.

You try and solve the issue of users creating a mess out of this unlimited usergroup suggestion of yours by requiring staff manual approvement. I am very much against implementing unnecessary manual-labor requiring systems here on a site of our size, with the prospect of growing. Knowing first-hand, as a resource mod, the consequences of staff members not being on to turn the gears of that system.
Staff members should generally be here to moderate poor content and support users with questions and fixing things they don't have access to; not fill in as a fully functioning system. The site should otherwise be able to run itself. The more systems we implement that break that, the more vulnerable our site becomes and the more stress on our staff team. Eventually leading us to needing to add more members simply because we've overburdened ourselves with unnecessary work; and on multiple occasions I have expressed my desire for a small tight knit staff team with fast and few communication channels enabling us to work better, more as one, as a team.
You're also requiring more personal judgement by requiring moderation like this; and again, as a member of the very small resource mod team, I'm familiar with the consequences of differences of opinions, and the conflicts and drama it can cause. I'm lucky that Myiume and I are the only members of our team and we're pretty much on the same page most of the time when it comes to the resource tasks. However, the mod team always has disagreements, as does any large group.
The last thing we need is users picking up on those disagreements when they want to create a new user group, and forming hate/love, good/bad, fair/biased claims and rumors against our staff members. I've seen it here, and I've seen it on other forums. It's not pretty, and it's a result of systems requiring the personal decision of a person instead of an automated system; unless the criteria can be extremely simplified so that opinions can't play a significant part, however, this massive suggestion you're making doesn't seem like one that can be simplified so easily.
I'd like to keep the actions requiring that staff members making personal calls be minimized to what's necessary as much as possible, and this suggestion of yours simple isn't necessary.

This suggestion separates our community further under visibly glorified labels and sections. Putting groups on a pedestal, and their 'leaders' at the head. There's a reason we disbanded the advertisement and discussion of external groups and communities. It's for the protection of our users.
We want our members to be regarded as equals, because we are equals. No person part of one group is better, no person in a part of another group is any worse. Supreme and Premium being exceptions because they are attained by a small sum of money and otherwise say nothing about the user other than they didn't purchase a specific rank.
Groups like this imply infinite possible meanings, especially depending on the purpose of the group and the members brought into it.
Allowing this would undermine the entire purpose of the group/community disbanding rule and would without a doubt spawn more hate and separation within our community.

Yes, this would bring in more money, and allow some people to take attention from the 'normal' members and give it to themselves. However, the ad placement and stickies we have, are pretty much the limit for me, for how I'd feel comfortable with our members monetarily giving themselves advantages over the rest of the community.
There's a moral line we need to draw, so that we don't become a pay to win attention site.

This suggestion is a big red flag of trouble in my eyes, and not something I'd want to risk implementing into the functioning of our site.

Wowsers, excellently said Justis.

Denied for the reasons above, thank you for the suggestion.