That is, please don't require membership signup for anyone who may wish to browse (lurk) without the desire to join. There are a lot of great people who, for whatever reason, may not wish to be publicly associated with a group but may benefit from those of us that do. They may even wish to join after discovering the group is (mostly) harmless and actually kinda fun to converse with.

I noticed that the rPod users group on Facebook now *requires* group signup to browse posts, making it an elite and closed community. I think this is a huge mistake and hurts the larger rPod owners and potential rPod owners community. If it remains this way, I will open a Google+ community without such restriction. 

fred

P.S. I just realized I may have broken the guns, politics and religion policy with my rant above. Sorry. 

fred

What's the problem with joining the FaceBook group?  It's free, no one makes you read it, you can not follow posts if you want to, you can lurk if you want to.  You may have an alias here and lurk in anonymity, but you have to use your name or make one up over there.  Either way it keeps the spam out of the Group, unlike the spammers we have here, and there is one today.  http://www.rpod-owners.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=4569&PID=44460&title=be-classic-or-in#44460

The closure was a good thing!

Well I am the one who "closed" the Facebook group.  And let me explain the reasons since this seems to be bothering you.

1) As a facebook group such as Rpod Owners grows larger and larger and larger Facebook recommends that it become closed, it is their recommendation to maintain their own privacy settings.

2) There is a lot more personal information tied to your Facebook account than here at the forums, yes you can nearly limit it all in your own personal settings but not entirely as there are many loopholes in the security settings there.

3) It used to be a closed group and it functioned the same as it did yesterday morning and the same as it does this morning without any issues.

4) There are a lot of members who wanted the added privacy to protect their trip plans and when they are away from their home.

I do at all understand the anger this seems to have generated with you, it by no means affects anything on that group and does not make anything elite or not open to anyone.  The group and all it's members are still 100% visible to anyone, you click the button saying you are interested in the group and then it's 100% open.  It has absolutely nothing to do with anything aside from the fact that this is how Facebook works.

Thank you for taking the time to explain. I should have been a bit more diplomatic, rather than just a rant. I have enjoyed browsing the rPod Facebook page. It has been both entertaining and (sometimes) a learned experience. Although this is my first stop every morning, that Facebook group was my second.

I guess I just don't understand Facebook well enough but, as I understand it, a closed group cannot be browsed anonymously. In order for one to browse or preview a closed group, one must join the group. 

I certainly understand the *moderated* forum model whereby only members may post or comment (like here), but I just don't understand how creating a private gated community is beneficial to the larger rPod community or to those who may be exploring the idea of rPod ownership.

To the point that some members believe creating a closed Facebook community somehow protects their privacy (trip plans), this is a false sense of security. Kinda like putting a small bicycle lock on your Honda 2000i in a Walmart parking lot in downtown Chicago. :)  It's quite easy to create a "fake" Facebook identity. There are, in fact, tutorials on just that. I hope this has been explained to the group. Perhaps an occasional moderator post reminding folks to review their personal privacy setting might be a good idea. It does amaze me what people "put out there".

Again, I apologize for the rant and won't do it again. I was just a bit surprised when I saw the lock on the door and over reacted. As administrator of the Facebook group it is certainly your prerogative to administer as you see fit. And, it's really not fair for me to even be having this discourse in this house.

Thanks again for your response and have a great day! It's time to go camping!

fred

And as I said it is the way Facebook prompts page admins to react, that big groups should be closed.  And yes it does prevent random lurkers to the group but it it still the exact same process as before.

We add probably 10 or more members a day and you've seen I'm sure that none of them ever post, they just lurk and gain helpful information and then maybe someday they'll say hi and get to know folks and that is great, but they can still lurk and no one is going to bother searching through 900 members to bother them.  It is just clicking that you want to view posts that has changed.  It's not gated or locked or unavailable to anyone, you just click that you want to see it.  Yes that's different, it's not 100% open to the world, but it is the second they say they want to view it.  

One of the other big reasons for the change, and we've discussed it there since the beginning is how active the group is and how it is spammy to other friends of friends newsfeeds.  It's easy for everyone just to click an arrow and ask to hide all content from such and such group but Facebook does make things complicated at times and not everyone knows how to limit their newsfeed or not show all the posts etc.  This has been the big fuss there most the entire time that the group has gone between open and closed.  I'm sure you've seen how quickly 1 post ends up with 60+ comments in a matter of minutes sometimes, then all a sudden a friend who just liked someone's picture now has 60 notifications from a group they don't even belong to. 

But yes it is very easy to make face accounts, I block probably 10 or more each day that try to gain access to the members there.  It's mostly harmless spamming, annoying but not a real threat, but it scares some users.

I know I kind of jumped around topics here but I sincerely do not want anyone to never feel welcome or invited or valued and wanted to post, lurk, or anything there.  It wasn't a decision that was made quickly or hastily, I have mails from members back when there were 20 of us there in the group discussing it, and of course more now that there are 900 of us.

I honestly did not expect anyone to even notice, it's been changed back and forth 3 or so times over the years, but I do appreciate you voicing a concern as to where the group may be headed or the goals of it.  

I certainly and honestly hope hanging out there with us as your second stop still continues.  There are a lot of Podders who could use advice and help and who just want to talk and share stories with other Podders.  It is each member there, here, other Rpod forums, and the other random Rpod pages and fansites out there that make us all the growing and evolving community that we are.

Thank you again Fred for saying what you felt needed discussing, that is the spirit behind all of this, for us all to share and grow our opinions based on the wisdom and thoughts of others!!

 

Open or close the Facebook forum.  I liked the old days of the internet. 

 

TT

Although I limit my Polysocial Engagements to forums like this and Google+ Communities and occasional tweets, I did stumble across this which might help address your Facebook open group timeline thing:

A couple of points: 1) I haven't tested that method. 2) I completely made up that "Polysocial Engagements" phrase. I feel a trending hashtag coming on... :)

fred