- last post: 01.01.0001 12:00 AM PDT
Apologies if this is a little long, but ear with me, and read the entire thing so you’ll understand why I didn’t put this in the Council thread.
Okay, I’ve been mulling this over for a while. IMO, the council is the wrong direction for the Seventh Column.
* The council is limited, and biased. It does not equally represent all forums and chapters of B.net.
* Putting together an official council is too much work, and likely not on the priorities for the community team.
* With limited council positions, there is very little reason for the average member to bother taking part. There seems to be no reason for a member to get involved with the council unless they want to get their Chapter spotlighted, in which case a PM would suffice. Most wouldn’t even notice. +99% of the members would be completely indifferent to the council, and the councilors.
I propose that we modify the proposed council to make it accessible to all members of b.net, and easier for the community team to implement.
Here goes:
“The Column”
We start a new chapter, or use an existing official chapter. Make it completely open to the public, completely accessible. We start doing Weekly Spotlights of groups, with the group’s forums for spotlight submissions, discussions, and suggestions, and polls. Everyone in the group can vote in the weekly spotlight. Past spotlights would be listed in a pinned thread.
Since this is all fairly unofficial, we suggest to the members that they leave a link to the current group spotlight in their signature. This way, the current spotlighted group could get thousands of links from various posts around the forum. Quite an advertisement, and something that would really help small groups looking to expand their membership.
Now, you’re probably thinking “But why would anyone really bother to join that group?”, and that’s the question that would need the tiniest bit of official help to answer. All the community team would have to do is tweak the forum code ever so slightly, so that members of the group would get a member role update in the official forums to something like “Column Member”. It’s a different title, but with no new privileges. I’m sure it can’t be more than a slight update to the forum database.
Now you’re probably thinking “Okay, they now have an updated title, why would they stay active in the group?” The answer: Another title change. Each month the forum ninjas would pick one Column member; and then change his member role to something like “Member of the Month”. Once again, there’s a new title, but no new privileges. It would be an enticing reward for active Column members, and enough to get them to keep group spotlights in their signatures.
I think this would be very worthwhile, it would help circulate members around the groups in the 7th column, and maybe even keep some of the members on better behaviour.
Thoughts?