In my opinion the only way this could work is for someone to take a little risk and start what they think would be the best solution going forward. Run that platform in parallel with GG but just include new posts in the startup. Everyone on GG INA could give it a try and see if it works. If it catches on then perhaps the powers that be could better consider its value and decide how to proceed. That person will not be me for I am a fine aged scotch lover on a beer budget.
Some quick thoughts on Brian Godfrey, Jon Lewit, and Brian Cayer’s comments in preceding posts…
Size of the effort and resources available: the INA has about 600 members out of the approximately 900 Nonsuch boats believed to be still afloat. The Google Discussion Group has about 1000 people signed up for it, although I don’t have a number on how many are actually active. Those are the numbers to be considered in figuring out what’s entailed in bringing people over to a new service.
People available to do the work…The INA Board varies in size between 6-10 people, and there’s a few additional people who volunteer to do specific additional things. That’s it for people who keep this all going. We’ve been without a volunteer willing and able to do webmaster work for nearly a year. Three of us with some tech background have been trying to cover that gap. (We might have a replacement gearing up, but I don’t know the current status.) There’s an effort (totally manually and people-dependent) to keep things synchronized between the website, the Discussion Group, and Facebook. If we don’t want folks to miss out, doing that also has to be taken into account.
Money to pay for stuff. The INA dues of $45/year cover paying for the services currently provided, paper publications like the Update and Registry, etc. Although there is a bit of extra right now because of things that were cancelled by Covid, the budget is approximately break-even. (Note: as near as I can tell, that $45 in annual membership fees was set in 1983, and has not gone up since.)
What would be enough of an improvement to make it worthwhile to move to something else. Jon Lewit posted a really good initial list. I hope people will respond to it. It may not be surprising from the preceding paragraphs that my major proposed addition would be “low overhead for maintaining it.” This is a bit of a contradiction coming from me, because I $@#!! hate Google and have a very low opinion of their discussion group software. I’d love to find something better.
How to go about testing alternatives. I partly agree with Brain Cayer that someone would have to step up and start one. It’d be nice, IMHO, if we could get a few people to get together and agree on testing out the same one. I personally think that, in addition to being better technically, any replacement needs what we used to refer to as “critical mass” – that is, a lot of people don’t come over until there’s enough of a core set of participants providing enough content to make it worthwhile.
Hi Bob,
Thanks for the clarification. I’m not bothered by the limits of either Google Groups or Facebook. Both do an adequate job of connecting me to other NonSuch sailors.
Personally I’d rather continue to use the free platforms than increase our quite reasonable dues so that we could enjoy more luxurious collaboration platforms.
It does bug me that great information and observations are shared but never captured and archived. Experienced contributors must get tired of answering the same questions each season.
Perhaps newer participants like me can be encouraged to summarize conversations that we find valuable and submit the summary to be archived on the INA website.
Summarizing a dialog is a great way to verify it is understood.
To test this idea, ( HERE ) is my summary of a recent dialog about how to inexpensively connect to shore power if your boat hasn’t been wired that way. I’d love for folks with more experience to verify that I’ve captured the relevant points… if website editors believe it adds value we can figure out how to archive it on the website.
If the INA board chooses to organize a team to sketch out a taxonomy for organizing the content assets currently on the website and a process new submissions for the archive, I would be happy to participate. I think having curated information that is easily searched and browsed would add more value for members than better collaboration tools.
Many thanks to the 6-10 board members and all the others that volunteer for the NonSuch community.
I would agree with the “If it ain’t broken …” sentiment, but I think that the question about replacing GG comes up every few years because in the bigger picture, it is maybe not broken, but so limited. As Rob points out, one of the things we could really use is a Wiki capability, which is not on any of our three platforms. IMHO it would be a bad idea to add a separate fourth platform to fix this.
Bob - Thanks for the background and information on the size of the community. And thanks much to the people who currently keep things running. I have no website skills, but I am continuing to sift through Discourse support postings and it looks promising. The overhead in the administrative setup is a hurdle, as well as defining the taxonomy of the Wiki topics, deciding what things to pull from their training materials and how best to deploy them, etc, etc. It is a job for a small team.
People with some interest in the full community application should look at https://meta.discourse.org/
This is the Discourse support site running, of course, on Discourse. It is very active, but browsing around will give you the feel of the application. The main part of the top page is the forum - not unlike what postings look like in GG.
I suppose we could get a trial instance (14 days free and it’s cheap enough per month if the trial takes longer), do some basic set-up and run through the must have checklist. Most importantly, see how it will run with email-only participants and see how easy it is to add content. Then if it looks good, invite everyone in and see how it flies?? What is giving me pause is that there are only a small number of people expressing an opinion about doing this (not that I want a hundred comments, but a dozen or two would provide some guidance). It would be good to know that people are at least willing to put up with a little noise in their email as things roll out, and they are willing to go to a sign-up page to create their account (once) and take a look.
An approach to ownership or should I say stewardship…
Before changing anything on Soave, I endeavor to understand the wisdom of my predecessors. ( Previous Stewards )
Often I find myself in awe of value and creativity contributed by her designers and previous owners… once I understand why stuff is the way it is… I can see more clearly a path forward.
Maybe our role in the Nonsuch community could be approached with a stewardship mindset ?
How would a stewardship mindset alter how we ponder the question of providing communication and collaboration tools for our community ?
Let’s look beyond the technical nuts and bolts and take inventory our assets before “re-powering” our systems.
Two thirds ( 600 ) of our 900 boats remain highly committed ( paying membership fees) to supporting a community for a boat that hasn’t been in production in 30 years. We must be doing something right !
Based on our FB group twice as many individuals are interested in NonSuch than we have boats ( 1800 FB members vs 900 boats ). ( Future owners ?.. Resale value )
The website has consolidated and amazing amount of information. I am not aware of any 30 year out-of-production boat that a better archive. ( info needed to keep our boat afloat )
Many subject matter experts participating on both FB & GG. ( if we updated our collaboration platforms, would more experts be lured to participate ? )
Excellent loyalty and satisfaction from community members. ( Are there any examples of boat specific communities with better stats ? If so, what platforms do they use ? )
Next let’s ask some honest questions about our current boat… errrr community.
What does FB provide that GG does not ?
What does GG provide that FB does not ?
Do we prefer the FB interface or the GG interface ? Why ?
Are we frustrated by a platform or the paradigm ? ( Interesting ideas yield from a google search… Are listservs outdated? )
Why is Google investing in AI and Quantum Computing instead of simply improving GG ?
How do – WE – benefit from our NonSuch community ?
Social
Information Sharing
Group purchase power
Resale value
Other benefits
I realize that stewardship of a boat is different from stewardship of a community, but maybe not that different.
BTW, my 1987 Universal Diesel in Soave is perhaps more “tired” than Google Groups, but I’ll keep it going till the cost to keep it exceeds the cost to replace. Maybe by the time it’s time to re-power electric propulsion will be a no-brainer ?
I do plan to buy Soave new sail this winter, because it makes her a better version of what she already is.
What can we do to make our Nonsuch community a better version of what it already is ? My vote is make it easier to search and browse the information assets on the website.