Yesterday, I set up a forum for the Lynbrook Class of 2012 because I felt that the existing system didn’t work for our purposes. As some may need to be convinced of this matter, I’d like to present a case for switching here:
Disadvantages of Google Groups:
- People don’t know how to get to the Google Group most of the time – 90% of those I asked didn’t know the URL or how to find it
- The Google Group’s emails have been either disabled or blocked by a huge portion of the target audience – meaning that announcements do not work properly, seeing as someone has to know of an event before looking it up in the Google Group
- For those who haven’t blocked or disabled it, there is a huge potential for spam – just remember “Ping Pong” from the beginning of the year.
Advantages of TwentyTwelve
- The ability to have different forums and different threads within forums allows for collaboration within groups, without sending emails about something like “Dance Choreography” to everyone, since only about ten to twenty people will be involved
- The ability to moderate: A Class Officer and/or site moderator can delete posts that are offensive or spam-like.
- The ability to edit: You can edit your own posts, so if you spelled something wrong or forgot something at the last minute, you can change it after the fact
- When the domain goes up (in about a week, if we use TwentyTwelve), it will be easy to remember and operate from
- It allows for polls – no longer do we have to move to the Yahoo! Group in order to have a T-shirt Poll.
- Since it would be regularly checked, it would be the ideal place to post meeting minutes and budget discussions – it wouldn’t spam those that didn’t care, and those that do care would be able to check themselves.
- As a webpage, the options for extending the site are nearly limitless – any functions missing now can be easily added later
- For you LSD people, it’s obvious this modus operandi works – LSD’s website works the same way. Did we all join a Google Group? No!
Link to current version of the website: TwentyTwelve (this will change when the domain goes up)
Register an account to see the forums – all accounts have to pass through admin inspection, since we can’t afford to let upperclassmen in, for fear of revealing Class of 2012 secrets.
Actually, LD debate uses a googlegroup for sharing all its debate cases. Therefore, that argument is null.
If I understand correctly, the purposes the forum do not include posting any debate cases. Therefore, your argument is nullified.
Also, LD debate uses a googlegroup because Ritik used punBB, a stripped down forum with no attachment support. TwentyTwelve runs on phpBB3, a full-functioned forum with the ability to post attachments up to 50 mb in size. If you have a debate case larger than that, good luck posting on google groups.