COntinued discussion about the new groups -- continued today in a post by Juliet:
Juliet and Ed (
juliet)
I totally don't understand the new community groups thing or whatever it's called.
Maybe Deborah can help? I got an email from "Chelsea" at Airbnb a couple of days ago, didn't have time to deal with it until today. I followed the directions, and logged in to the community forum. Saw that there are posts by a few names I know. I posted a very brief reply to one of CC's questions ("Why are there levels?") mostly just to see what would happen. My comment showed up at the end of the list with the little message: "This widget could not be displayed". What on earth does that even mean? Oh how I hate changes. Grrrrr.
Juliet and Ed (
juliet)
Also, how do I even access that "community" thingy again? I don't want to have to save the original email for ever. I clicked on the message at the top of this page ("Introducing the Community Center") and it took me to something quite different, just a description of what the Com. Center will be.
C C (
CC)
Hi, Juliet & Ed! No idea what the heck any of that is!!! I wish I knew what your response about the levels was!! Who knows how to navigate to any of it?? I'm lost....
Deborah (
High Priestess)
HI Juliet
A lot of people have found the new community groups (which many people are getting a sneak peek into -- they will open to everyone in about 3 weeks) very confusing and hard to navigate -- including me, and I am pretty good at navigation. Also, the site still has some bugs, so people are getting error messages.
You can't get there from the banner on top of this page, as the groups aren't open to everyone yet. You have to go back to your email from Chelsea and log in again using the info there. WHen the groups open to everyone around Nov 14 or within a week after that, you won't have to log in separately to get to it.
I predict a lot of people will wonder why this new site is called "community groups" because it doesn't look like groups. Several of us are saying it looks like composing emails. Anyway, I dont' want to tell people what they should think of it, but just let everyone have their own experience and then when we have seen it we can come back here and talk about it, or talk about it on there, whatever folks want to do. Might be a lot easier to find everyone here because several people are getting hecka lost over there. Some people who went on the new groups vanished altogether and have not been seen since.
C C (
CC)
Lol
Deborah (
High Priestess)
Some people started talking about levels on the new groups (if you click on the link in the banner above you can read a bit about the levels). Basically all participants start at Level 1 and rise up by level the more they participate. It's a ranking system. I don't much like the levels --- here's what I wrote about them on the new groups:
"In the old groups we didnt' need level indicators, because everyone who was active on the groups, knew not only who the regular contributors were, but also their personalities and the kinds of things they posted. THose who were new, knew they were new and so did the regulars know they were new. I think that is preferable, actually. To have a community where people just get to know each other in the community, without having artificial level indicators.
I see the point of @till & Jutta about how it is helpful for those asking a question to see the amount of experience of those answering, but the quality and thoughtfulness of answers is also indicative of the amount of experience, and I think that is actually preferable, to be able to gauge someone's experience level just by the content of their reply. In fact, it's better for someone to assess the value of a cerain reply, just by its content, not by the "level" of the person replying. It's not going to necessarily be true that someone with a higher "level" gives a better reply. And after all, one gains hosting experience and wisdom, by actual life experience, but with regard to the levels on these groups, you can gain levels just by posting stuff -- which may or may not be useful, or quality content. As @helga astutely indicates, one could go up in "levels" here on the groups, but not actually be a host who has ever had any guests book your place. So the level indicator most definitely is not correlated with actual hosting experience, or really any real life experience at all-- it's solely a function of number of posts/replies/initial threads/likes etc.
I dont' know the details but I think the levels are calculated not only by one's number of posts, but also by the replies to one's posts and perhaps the "likes" on one's posts, etc. So, when a group user starts many threads, and thus has many replies to those threads, their "level" could potentially climb even when they are off on vacation somewhere, not doing any posting at all, because people are still replying to their posts.
I dont' exactly feel comfortable being the highest level person currently on here. IT attracts attention and perhaps envy and resentment. I like being helpful, but my motivation to be helpful, is to build hosting skills and knowledge among hosts, and to make certain bad experiences/learning mistakes that I had with renters in the past, be used for a good purpose now, to benefit others. My motivation to be helpful is not to "get stuff", and that is the sense that the level indicators introduce. Now, one can potentially be motivated to participate not to be helpful or to build community, but to rocket oneself to level stardom. Icky. Also I certainly don't like being a person others resent or envy, like Shannon so honestly and directly responding to the levels saying, "I'm 1 and you are 7 (or 8)....what's up with that???!"
. I think we should all have the option to make our level invisible, or hidden, so that others couldn't see it.
Helga replied to me:
Great post, Deborah, you say that very clearly ! I'd opt for invisible levels on the spot.
- Besides, did you think about the responsability? What happens if a level 9 is a bit tipsy or in a funny mood and makes a joke? Some naive soul might follow that to the letter...
Then I replied also:
Helga's is another good point. A person with a high level might not overall have helpful info to share. THey might be someone who says "hi" 20 or 30 times a day, in response to everyone's post. Like someone who we ended up calling "The Welcome Wagon" on the Anecdotes forum. He would just say "Welcome" to every single post, including those posting spam, posting property listings, everything. The amount of helpful info he shared was quite minimal, and by supporting spam and property listings post, he was actually working in opposition to the stated purpose of the forum. Yet if we'd had level indicators there, he might have had a high level indicator, so liberal was he with his "Welcome!" replies.
And Helga's point is well made too, that someone with a high level indicator might be in an off mood or have a bad day, and their silly or weak reply, might yet be taken seriously, too seriously, by a newbie who is too enchanted with their high level number. Again, it's best if people learn to evaluate content based on its intrinsic value, not artificially by associated level indicator.
This issue actually corresponds to a new host issue we have dealt with often on the groups. Newbie hosts in particular seem to place too much confidence in guests having Verified ID. They seem to think that Verified ID will do magic, and ensure that this will be a good guest. Certainly Verified ID has its value, but it does not replace hosts needing to have screening skills, and learning how to screen guests. Hosts who don't know how to screen guests, are accepting bookings based on Verified ID or lack thereof, and are having problems as a result. This would be quite similar to taking advice based on the level indicator of the replier, without having the skill to assess the value of the content in the reply. Just as we want to build skills in hosts as to how to do good screening for guests, we want to build skills in group users about how to assess the value of a reply to their post, apart from artificial level indicators.
For all these reasons, I think it would be best if group users could choose to hide their level or make it invisible.
C C (
CC)
Can you figure out what your own level is at any given time???
Deborah (
High Priestess)
Each person's level shows right underneath their own photo and name. So you & everyone else can see it at all times -- even when you don't want to! WHen I first got on those groups, you could click on your name and it would take you to a statistics page where you could see your total number of posts, replies , likes etc. Now they have removed that (for the time being) so you can't click on your name anymore or see your statistics.