Good ideas...groups are the life blood of chess.com.. any tools which help administration or make them more versatile and fun will add great value
Suggestions for new admin tools
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unu wrote:
- admins should be able to send a news piece to a customized list of members, not to all only: they should be able to select destinaton members based on criteria as: rating/T.O. percentage/games finished etc.
+1
This would really help drive member engagement if implemented, since admins would be able to much more efficiently target our efforts in recruiting players to big league matches.
Many members are simply members of too many groups and begin to ignore or turn of group notes alerts.. one of the reasons that news are so important.
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Many members are simply members of too many groups and begin to ignore or turn of group notes alerts.. one of the reasons that news are so important.
Interesting observation, that correlation. Common sense of course in and of itself, but now that you mention it so, it occurs to me that overall engagement on the site could probably be driven up considerably if members could only join a given maximum number of groups (could even be tiered, by membership tier, perhaps).
This way, people would value more the groups that they are in, and thus be more active in them.
Not an admin tool, of course, but a tangential idea that could bear good fruit.
Great idea... It would be much better if members limited themselves to few home teams and perhaps few teams on 2 month trial...than now where many keep accepting group invites out of curiosity or (misplaced) politeness.
Maybe free members: max 10 groups and then more for paying members?
I had an arbitrary figure of 20 in mind, which would mean me personally cutting down from what appears to have become 38 for me - but yes, for example 10 free 15 gold 20 platinum 25 diamond, for instance.
Or maybe 10 free 20 gold 30 platinum 40 diamond, at the most.
But definitely would result in far fewer bloated teams with mostly non-active members, and make it much easier for everyone to connect with everyone who's actually active for their groups.
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
Of course it makes no sense to join more teams than you can participate in, but is it really the site's job to police that?
nonono, Don't limit groups,
Bilbo21 wrote:
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
Of course it makes no sense to join more teams than you can participate in, but is it really the site's job to police that?
The site doesn't police much at all, besides cheating. They generally let members do what they want to do, within reason of course, so that they can make as much of it as they like.
I certainly agree that admins could do with some advanced tools for organising their groups, and David's suggestion of a tier system definitely makes sense.
I fear that unless these types of things were already in the planning for v3, we won't see them until v4...
Bilbo21 wrote:
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
Of course it makes no sense to join more teams than you can participate in, but is it really the site's job to police that?
I agree. Admins can remove all inactive members easily. And that idea with limitations will only make problems for people who are very active on site in many different groups and competitions, for example, to be involved in running some team or competition, it is usually needed to be part of at least 2 or 3 groups.
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
I don't agree with chess.com limiting groups but I do agree with a policy of deleting inactive (non participating) members. The problem is how do you manage that? How can admins access the info (easily) of who's participated in the last 6 or 12 months and who hasn't? It would be quite a laborious process right now and would be helpful if chess.com had the tools for admins to see member participation stats.
Phoenix_Scorpion wrote:
Bilbo21 wrote:
VirtualKnightJoakim wrote:
Yes, what is the point of having 200 extra members who do not participate in anything and have all the alerts turned off?
Another way to implement this is to have admins create policies, or have a site wide policy, say you must participate in one team match or vote chess or forum say every 6 month or you will be automatically deleted from group. But simpler may be to simply limit the amount of group you can be member of?
Of course it makes no sense to join more teams than you can participate in, but is it really the site's job to police that?
I agree. Admins can remove all inactive members easily. And that idea with limitations will only make problems for people who are very active on site in many different groups and competitions, for example, to be involved in running some team or competition, it is usually needed to be part of at least 2 or 3 groups.
+1
I would not mind if admins could get an easy way to remove inactive members (although I think it is debatable whether inactive members hurt a group or not), but I do not like limiting the number of groups a member can join.
To list a few groups I am member of which I think doesn't make sense if I had to leave in order to join any new group (11 in total):
Official chess.com groups:
Help & Support
Chess.com/TV
Chess.com Feedback
Cheating Forum
Groups used for references:
Vote Chess Elo Rankings
Leagues/Tournaments/Cups Listings
Thematic Vote Chess
Vote chess Leagues:
Vote Chess League Tournaments
Vote Chess League Headquarters
Other management groups:
Tournament Directors
Admins Corner & Training Center
Also things would get a bit problematic for members like zugzwang67 which is managing a lot of slow LIVE chess tournaments. Each of the slow LIVE chess tournaments have its own group.
Very good feedback...
Let me first say, that highest and immediate priority should be to re-instate old news functionality as discussed in other forum:
https://www.chess.com/forum/view/suggestions/change-in-news-functionality
Let me first say that benefit of pruning groups from completely inactive members have been much discussed and well documented. A group like “MONIKA” was first able to recruit large amount of members for EPIC matches after pruning from 1,800 to 1,300 members. Group members feel encouraged to step up and join matches once they know that activity is criteria to stay in the group. It also increases comradery and loyalty to feel you are part of a group where members care. Again, beside getting a higher listing under group, what could be possible benefit of getting 500 ghost members who never participate in anything and disable all alerts from group?
It will take us of topic to discuss the merit of pruning. If anyone is interested, I can recommend the following forum:
https://www.chess.com/groups/forumview/removal-quotpruningquot-of-inactive-team-members
in the admin group:
https://www.chess.com/groups/home/admins-corner-amp-training-center
Now, assuming that we want to exclude members who are completely inactive from group, how could a good feature set be constructed?
In terms of additional functionality to help admin keep groups active and members engaged, I recommend below options, starting with most desirable. Only one option needs to be implemented?
Option 1:
Limit the amount of group you can be member of. But only count groups which are active in either team matches or vote chess. That means that none of the special admin headquarters, admin, tournament, or special support and other chess.com groups would be counted. (It is a group setting, and each group has to be configured to either support vote chess and team matches or not). Only limit for free members who are already limited to one concurrent tournament.
Option 2:
Add a group setting that members would be automatically deleted if they have not participated in any team match, vote chess or forum last 6 month.
Option 3:
Add the following to manage members as sortable columns:
- Participated in last team match (date)
- Participated in last vote chess (date)
- Last post for group notes, forum or note (date)
- Timeout percentage
The reason why this should be sortable is that it takes a very long time if you have to click in for each member. I speak of experience as in team "MONIKA" we prune any member who has a timeout % higher than 20.
In general I will always favor added functionality over added restrictions. Someone will always be upset if we add restrictions and I don't think adding restrictions with how many groups you can join would solve inactive member problems. If there would be any restriction though I would prefer to limit the number of groups you can represent in team matches and limit the number of groups you can represent in vote chess. Then it would be up to the group admins if they will allow any member in the group that does not represent either team matches or vote chess for them.
In a related topic, even without the restriction I would like to somehow mark the teams that I want to represent in team matches or vote chess (just turning on/off team match and vote chess alerts is not enough). I'm probably a minority, but I like being a member of a lot of teams, but only represent a few (although I don't mind getting removed from teams that do not like my inactivity).
I like your third option, although I would ideally like some tool to list members with a matching criteria. Then you could do things like sending a message to all members that match the criteria or remove all members that match the criteria. Some criteria's could be:
min/max timeout ratio
Activity/ No activity in group since date X (activity = join team match/vote chess/post in forum/notes etc. Maybe split this into several different criterias)
Min/max rating in a specific category
min/max time since last login.
If something like this gets implemented, then admins can always be in control when members are removed and could easily track how many inactive members they removed. Then they could send a warning that inactive members will get removed to inactive members and then remove them later if they stay inactive.
Martin0 wrote:
In general I will always favor added functionality over added restrictions.
Absolutely! Let's think of tools not limitations.
Idea: Internal profile on group home page - sometimes admins need to keep important informations constantly in the homepage of the team so it is visible to members at all times and rapidly accessible. I suggest an internal profile just like the external profile of groups but visibile only to internal members on the home page of the group. So when a member goes to the home page can have a direct look at what is important in that moment for the group. Now admins use notes for that but notes are not good, specially where there are many active members. It is not possible to stick a note to the top. That would be an idea.
An idea I had recently would be a way to embed an admins only section into the groups, where admins can discuss things privately. Many groups create a second group for this purpose, but that is a little annoying sometimes. I would prefer to have it embedded, or at the very least to be able to link the two groups together, so that I can go back and forth between them with the click of a button.
ijgeoffrey, I think you are right.
One new idea that is more like a group functionality not an admin tool:
NOTES ALERT FUNCTIONALITY CHANGE
I think every group has the problem of group alerts. An alert is sent to al members when there is a new group note. That makes a lot of group members to turn notes alerts off. And that is ultimately bad because if admins want to post an important note, it might get unsufficient attention. So, admins have to impose a strict rule and limit players to post only important notes. But that does not work in the long term.
What I propose is two options for notes alerts from witch members to decide:
- send notes alerts only for admin notes (should be the default option)
- send notes alerts for all members notes
It will solve the problems we do have now with this.
This topic is dedicated to finding new ideas for admin tools that could be implemented to make group experience more pleasant for members and to help admins manage their groups easier.
This discussion stared from the topic based on the change of groups news functionality: https://www.chess.com/forum/view/suggestions/change-in-news-functionality
Any ideas, wishes, suggestions, opinions ... about this in V3?
Of course doing anything in V2 might only be temporary, and wiped out as soon as V3 takes over.
This should be solved soon, I hope, in v2 if v3 is far away. Anyway, I consider ilmago's idea very interesting. We could bring out more intelligent options for admins to use. Here are some ideas:
- admins should be able to send a news piece to a customized list of members, not to all only: they should be able to select destinaton members based on criteria as: rating/T.O. percentage/games finished etc.
- admins should be able to create internal categories for news: - call to registration, news about team, etc. and members should be able to subscribe or unsubscribe for each category.