Subject: Groups Feature Confusion

Subject: Groups Feature Confusion

Hi everyone,

I find the groups feature in Friendica very confusing, and it's a common criticism I hear from others.

**Group Creation:** When I create a group, I first create a normal user account and then change the account type. It was confusing at first, but I've gotten used to it.

**Permissions Display:** At the top of posts, I see an exclamation mark with the group handle (!helpers...), but there's also a separate permissions tab showing "friends." My understanding is that all group members can see the post regardless of friendship status. How do these two pieces of information work together?

**Restricted Groups:** I can set a group to "public - restricted." This means people must be accepted to join, but I was told group posts are visible to anyone, member or not. So what exactly does "restricted" control? If I reject someone, they can still see the posts, so it does not seem to restrict access, but what?

In my opinion, having group posts be publicly visible is counter-intuitive and has caused a lot of annoyance among my friends.

**Join Request Notifications:** To approve join requests, I have to switch to the group account. There's no notification on my normal user account, so I easily miss requests and have to constantly check the accounts page. Is there a better way to handle this?

Thanks for any clarification!

@claus Very good points! I think it would be a good idea to create issues for these.
For group creation there is one already.

For permissions, maybe the permissions form just shouldn't be there when posting in a group? Makes sense to me at least.

For restricted groups, perhaps the purpose is that it restricts who can write to the group, because that requires membership? The text on the page ought to explain that though.

I don't know about whether posts to "public" groups should pop up on other's walls or not. At least if they are, the UI could perhaps make more of a difference between group posts and "regular" posts?

Good point on notifications for groups. I'm not sure what a good way to solve that is. I don't think there should just be notifications for all accounts, but perhaps groups could be different, so group notifications are shared with the account it's a delegate of?

@claus

This is a timely message

I am working to understand groups, and organizations.

I'll reread this message when in front of the computer and see how it can help me better understand them and use them better:)

Thanks

@helpers

@claus

You mention that creating a group is a bit challenging. I am trying to figure out how to do it.

Do you have an documentation,or website explaining them and how t do this?

Thanks

Joseph

@joseph Hello Joseph,

I'm not sure about the documentation—it's often a bit outdated. I also think "Groups" were once called "Forums" or something similar, so that name might still appear occasionally in the docs.

I can share my two cents, though I'll admit I confused myself trying to piece things together.

You can create a new group on the /network page by clicking the + button next to Groups. If I remember correctly, a menu opens for creating a new user (which is a bit confusing). Groups in Friendica seem to be user accounts, so you essentially create a new "user." From the dropdown menu next to your profile image, you can select accounts, and the new user should be visible there. Select that new user to switch accounts, then go to Settings for the new account. There, you can change the account type to make it a "group" account.

One thing that has annoyed many people is the assumption that groups are private and only members can see posts. That's not the case - anyone can see the posts. @marcusxms suggested that only group members can POST to a group, but anyone can READ. This makes sense, but I haven't verified it myself. The documentation doesn't really make this clear.

When you require new users to be authorized and someone requests to join, the new user/group account receives a notification. However, at least for me, that notification isn't visible in your normal user account, so you constantly have to watch your group account. This is inconvenient for one group and impossible for several. But maybe there's a way to handle this that I don't know about.

There's another confusing aspect that maybe experienced users can clarify. When someone requests to join a group (for which authorization is required) , you're presented with an option on how to accept them. I can't remember the exact wording, but it was something like "Follower" and "Not-Follower." I'm not sure what the right choice here is.

@claus @marcusxms

Thanks for the ideas abotu groups. I'll keep these in mind.

the follower and non follower thing, need clarifying, or better word choice.

the 100% visible to the public for groups,this should be an option. Discussions in a group or amongst friends d not need to be always public.

Thanks for the ideas and hopefully we can get the working better:) Or, at least a better understanding there set up and use.

@claus

Actually somehow the confusion might start by the wording.

What you consider a group is for me a forum page.

Than there is the german word "Gruppe" that translated means group but is used for circles, which is the group of contacts you gather into a circle of distribution of posts (and images).

To a certain extent this is and sounds a little bit like wrapping your head around terms and expectations and how in any case we should or could improve that expectation from the get go.
Like to say, wen creating a profile, there could be question from the get go to define:
Do you want is to be a forum page profile or a single user profile?

Perhaps its even useful to separate the two by allowing forum pages only to be created by single user profiles. It makes sense because somehow there is or should be always someone responsible for such a forum page.

There is (or was) the private forum, but it always stated in development , I guess because its permission settings are quite difficult to create and maintain.

In other words, there are no groups, only Zirkle you can create with by bundeling contacts of your profile into circles of distribution and forum pages that are public redistribution nodes of only public posts and answers.

I actually even wonder if only the posts but not the answers should pop up (on mastodon) as otherwise I find it quite annoying to get every answer pushed into my stream and notifications (on mastodon).

And the german version should adapt Zirkle for the term "Gruppe", its a reasonable translation and on the latin language side its circulo al over the place. Like to say, when ever there is an esperanto term that is similar to the englisch term used just impose that onto everyone.

@claus

Just stumbled over some settings, this time in german, trillingual observations and research about the inner workings of friendica often only add to the confusion.

So, actually in settings circles are called Kreise (instead of Zirkel), and forum profiles Gruppen (instead of Foren), if I get this right.
(Ok, right now I actually wonder if groups does refer to something else than forum page profiles.)