Suggestion: Sub-communities

[Wind Chaser 4,768]

I got this idea from another forum I was on that had just recently updated its software and began a feature like this as "fan clubs".

 

Basically, I'm talking about dedicated groups with their own sub-forums founded by regular users based on a shared interest or topic, with their own subscribed members, contributors, and staff, in a similar manner to DeviantArt groups. It would make a good replacement for the meetups and Fan Clubs sections on this forum, as well as many topics in other areas.

 

The big questions are: has this been considered before, and is it feasible under the site's current software and resources?

[Fhaolan 4,483]

I'm not sure if it's come up before for discussion for Meetups or FanClubs, but it did pop up once to my memory for RPs, and it didn't get followed through as it was researched it because pretty obvious the solutions with IP.Board (the software we're using right now) made the whole exercise way more effort than it was worth.

 

The big thing is that no automated way to assign a *team* to moderate a thread (like a meetup or FanClub). It's possible to set it so that the thread creator can moderate their own thread to some extent, but but I'm not entirely sure what tools actually get exposed to the OP when that happens, and it's restricted to just the OP. Plus once that's set for a section, it's not an optional thing. Any OP would become a sub-moderator for their threads in that section, whether or not they wanted to have that responsibility and they couldn't pass that on to anyone else.

 

Plus, when new sectionals or moderators are brought on board, there's a bit of training that goes along with that including a series of 'don't use that particular tool even though you can see it' either because 'it doesn't do what you think it does', and/or 'it has side-effects nobody wants to deal with.'

 

With actual sections of the forum (like say, 'Fan Clubs', or 'Northern Equestria' under RP), it's possible for the Admins to create a special permission group that can be granted sectional staff-like abilities within that small slice of the forum, but I honestly don't know if that can be narrowed down to only apply to one thread. Even if it can, that takes manually creating a permission group for each meetup/fanclub/rp and assigning people to them, and going through all the stupid IP.B hoops to give it permissions...

 

So, I personally like the idea, but I'm not sure our current system can handle that in a reasonable way.