New forum/Community

[John Conyard]

I'm happy to talk to you about the RAT/RAC anytime.

I think I pointed out at least once that I turned OFF the option to have exclusive group discussions. In fact, I noticed there's an option to always have group discussions automatically put in the forum. I'm going to check that out and see if it's useful. That way, we can form interest groups and still everyone would be able to follow what's going on.

That is a good start, and I do appreciate it. Of course if you duplicate posts in the groups and on the main discussion forum, then why have the groups? Better to keep discussion in one place on the main forum.

In the same way I would ask that interesting discussions between groups of "friends" be linked to and duplicated in the relevant topics on the RAT forum. Exclusive groups operating on RAT cannot be good, and if members are really are not talking about anything Roman, why have them? People can PM instead, or use facebook, email etc.

And if people want to be put up interesting blogs or tutorials on RAT can they be linked to the relevant section of the forum as well? It would save us chasing around lots of blogs and personal stuff. Of course if they are of no interest, if all we see are photos of happy people dressed as Romans or on their holidays, well why have them? I agree with you that they can share such stuff on facebook with friends etc. and should not waste space on RAT. Those of genuine interest they need to be on the main RAT discussion forum.

That would help stop any information migration away from the RAT discussion forum into the community forums on RAC.

I do appreciate we both run the risk of hubris. Perhaps we need to concentrate on talking about Roman stuff for a while and put the Facebook idea on hold.