Blood Bowl Community on Facebook turns "private"

[Saebelsultan]

To whom it may concern…
I was debating with myself, if I should pick up this topic at all, but over the last two weeks I came to the conclusion that – for a hobby topic – I feel strongly about this, so here is opinion on the Blood Bowl Communities facebook decision.

The Blood Bowl Community facebook group will change its setting from public to private coming end of November. I do not knowhow this decision was reached and if there was a broad consens among its members, but the decision seems to stand.
I would like to argue against it.

I am not a facebook member. There are several good reasons to be a facebook member as well as there are reasons for not being a facebook member. I simply choose not to. However, I acknowledge the worth an active facebook group can have, and I think that is especially true for the Blood Bowl Community group, when it is active in a way that people can share their hobby in a positive way, set good examples, be an inspiration to others, help each other out by answering questions and requests. Those are all attributes I associate with the Blood Bowl Community group.

Apart from me, as a lurker, still wanting to get all the news on models from GW and third parties, all the good stuff people come up with for their teams, all the news on tournaments and podcasts and so on, I honestly think that the Blood Bowl community in general is the most open minded and most friendly hobby group there is at the moment. I think that defines Blood Bowlers on the whole! I fear changing the groups setting to private is a step into the wrong direction and leads away from the positivity it now has. The facebook group is the place to go at the moment concerning Blood Bowl social life. It grew enourmous over the last couple of years and has a general good spirit. Now, my thinking is, if I am a new player and still in the process of getting into the game, an open group with all the shared content and the general good spirit is the best advertisement anyone could ask for and will make me play this game a lot more if I know I will have a good interaction. In general I believe in being open minded to others and sharing for the benefit of all. That makes a community stronger and in general motivates people to engage and to contribute to the community. Therefore I belive the Blood Bowl Community group should stay public! This is especially true for this community and this game I like so much.

In the announcement that the facebook group will be private the pro was given, that it will reduce the amount of lurkers who do not contribute. I disagree with this pro. For one, the group has almost 20,000 members. I do not know the numbers, but I strongly suspect that only a fraction of those 20,000 do actually contribute. And speking for myself, even as I do not contribute on facebook, I regularly get inspiration from facebook which I then turn into contributions to the Blood Bowl community in general. I started organizing tournaments, I have a website about getting started with Blood Bowl, I am active in my local league. So I do contribute to the Blood Bowl community and in part that is due to me being able to participate passively in the facebook group. I hope others do feel the same way and in their own way contribute to their own leagues/tournaments/etc..

About the posts not showing up for friends being a pro, I cannot say anything, since I don’t use facebook.
About not being able to share posts with non members being a con, I agree.

Lastly I find it not fair to state that a 180 likes and a few approving comments (concerning the announcement to change the groups privacy settings) in a group of 20,000 mark the change to private as something “the group” wants.

That concludes my opinion. Feel free to disagree or agree. Even feel free to share on facebook I you wish to do so. I would appreciate a discussion.

-Saebelsultan

[lunchmoney]

I, too, do not use FB and also found the choice to move to private an odd one.

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[Skitters]

Whilst I didn't request the change myself, I have to admit I've preferred to generally post to other Blood Bowl groups that are private rather than the main community after a few of my non BB Facebook friends commented (outside of FB) and I realised it could get irritating for them quite quickly

I'll be happier to post there again when it is private because I don't like the idea of putting excess BB content on the pages of people who are not interested.

That said it will remain to be seen if a private group will encourage more posts from members and I do agree that there is risk that it will make the game less visible to potential new players.

[sann0638]

Happy to engage in the conversation. Interesting that it opens it up to "non-Facebook" users, hadn't considered that, because no non-Facebook users posted. Can't think why.

[Saebelsultan]

I'll be happier to post there again when it is private because I don't like the idea of putting excess BB content on the pages of people who are not interested..

I think that is a valid point. Hearing, not knowing, that FB has a lot of personal privacy settings, is it possible to prevent friends getting content from individual groups?
And - this is more for Sann to say if it is possible - if so, would it be practical to maybe put a link on how to do that in the groups description so every member has the possibility to restrict what friends receive?

[Mystic Force]

20,000 people actively participating to me sounds like a terrible idea, it would drown under a torrent of posts, spreading quality out to much.

As for lurkers I think they are an under appreciated demographic, just yesterday I was rather amazed to see a couple post in another thread where one person had been a member for 13 years and posted 4 times, another 11 times in 6 years. Presumably there are people who like to see what's going on without feeling the necessity to have to make banal comments to "show engagement"

I can see reasons to make such a group private, if people would rather keep their hobby interest away from others, stigma and all that. I have a facebook account but barely look at it and removed the app from my phone to stop it pinging all the time for things I do not care about.

Discussion on topics are way better on here than on facebook, although we do not get the numbers of participants that you can get there, weirdly a discussion forum is set up better to handle in depth discussion of a topic......

[JT-Y]

A Facebook group being public or private concerns me little, but I would like to point out that, with regards to GW news, you will always get that first via Warhammer-community.com, or or by following the official Blood Bowl or Warhammer TV Facebook pages.

[sann0638]

And - this is more for Sann to say if it is possible - if so, would it be practical to maybe put a link on how to do that in the groups description so every member has the possibility to restrict what friends receive?

Not possible - it's for an individual user to say "don't show me this group". Afaik.

[Saebelsultan]

A Facebook group being public or private concerns me little, but I would like to point out that, with regards to GW news, you will always get that first via Warhammer-community.com, or or by following the official Blood Bowl or Warhammer TV Facebook pages.

That is, of course, true. The facebook group does expand on this as it functions as a central hub for all kind of news concerning BB (not exclusivly the GW news). That is good for veterans and newbies alike.

Not possible - it's for an individual user to say "don't show me this group". Afaik.

I think I communicated that falsly. What I meant was, if there is a facebook setting for an individual that allows posts in selected groups to not show up in your friends feeds, would it be possible to add a "Hot-to"-link or an explanation on how to do it to the groups description, so everybody who wants to keep their BB posts private can do exactly that?
I will google the FB privacy settings myself for what it is worth.

Also, is NOT setting the FB group to private at all an option?

[JT-Y]

The simple solution is to sign up to Facebook and join the group. I must admit that it took me long enough to join Facebook (and I still don't have any desire to join or use Twatter), but being on there allows me to keep in touch with people I otherwise wouldn't, as well as be part of groups for my interests. It isn't a bad thing. I value the being able to keep in touch with people quite highly, certainly considering how dispersed my circle of friends and family has become with people moving to Ireland, Germany, Canada and Australia.

[sann0638]

if there is a facebook setting for an individual that allows posts in selected groups to not show up in your friends feeds

There isn't, sadly.

Also, is NOT setting the FB group to private at all an option?

We made the decision based on lots of feedback and conversation between the admins, and think it is best for the group. We'll have the conversation between the admins again, but generally the idea is that it will encourage more people to post more often. It's possible (though no real way of knowing) that we will see a decrease in the rate of growth of BB due to it, but we may also see more people joining if you have to join to see posts, and people are free to post on their own feed if they want to spread the word (as I do).

[besters]

Never having used Facebook, is there anything of importance there that doesn't originate or get repeated on TFF?

[sann0638]

Never having used Facebook, is there anything of importance there that doesn't originate or get repeated on TFF?

Yep! Depending on your definition of important...

[Skitters]

Never having used Facebook, is there anything of importance there that doesn't originate or get repeated on TFF?

Not news, but people like to add pics of painted teams or star player conversions they've done. That would probably be where my output would increase*

There are usually a number of posts about "what skill to take next" and then someone kicking off because they recall someone else asking the same question three weeks previously.

*....thinking about, if I post these to the BB community group I would be less inclined to post to other BB Groups such as the BB 2016 one and the painting and kitbashing groups (which are private) so another impact may be it will hit the activity of other smaller groups.

[besters]

Thanks both, I suspect the content is insufficient for me to change my stance on this.