A good while ago now Viki Babbles Gonia posted an article outlining the steps to rescue abandoned groups:
Abandoned Groups: Instructions for adoption as owner/admin
I followed the process and mentioned that I would be interested in taking ownership of the Web Development group, since it appeared to have been abandoned. Time has borne this out and ownership has been transferred. Looking at the articles that are being put in the group it is fairly clear that the group has, to some extent, become a dumping ground for political articles.
As of now, this will stop.
The description / rules for the group currently read as follows:
The Web Development Group features news, tools and resources related to web technologies.
This was the original intention for the group, and while there are (as with every group) some grey areas there are also some that are easily distinguishable as black or white. So, here are some examples of articles that will no longer be accepted to the Web Development group:
KUHNER: Obama's homosexual America - Washington Times
Here is a recent example of an article with a political slant that is probably still relevant to the Web Development group:
Egypt Leaders Found 'Off' Switch for Internet
Now, I would like to open a dialogue with the group members. While I am the new owner, and there are existing administrators, any group exists for and because of it's members. The members not only contribute and consume the articles posted to the group, but at a juncture such as this I believe that you have an important role in deciding what it is that you want the group to be. So I want to know from you whether you think that the current description above is too restrictive (I doubt anyone would find it too permissive). For example, should we be accepting an article on Facebook that doesn't specifically have any development angle to the piece? I would argue no, there are plenty of other groups on Newsvine where these articles would fit, but this is not for me to decide - I want your input.
As an example, should articles such as this be a part of this group or not: Cautionary tale: Man used Facebook to hack women's emails
Whatever we end up deciding, I would like administration of the group to follow similar principles to other groups that I administer on the Vine:
1) The group rules / description (whatever they end up being) will be strictly enforced, but there will be some fuzziness around the acceptability of grey-area articles. In other words, those articles that clearly need to be removed will be removed, and there will be some (limited but necessary) subjectivity on the grey-area articles because it is impossible to cover all possibilities in the rules.
2) Anyone repeatedly posting off-topic articles will receive a warning, and if they continue will be booted from the group.
There is a poll, please answer it so that we can get an idea of where the members want the group to go. If you would like to be an administrator for the group drop me a mail, groups can always use good admins.
I have used some articles as examples above - please don't take this personally, they just happen to be the first ones I found that explain what I am trying to say. I am not having a go at any members, and no-one should use these examples to point fingers at members.
UPDATE: It looks like the general consensus is that the group should be purely about web development. Not tangential issues affecting web development, not things around web development, but web development specifically. If there is no change to this by Sunday 20th March 2011 then that will be the road ahead and I will go back removing articles that do not fit.
