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SPECIAL GR: 25 Feb - Review of how GR's are going
Hello to all our awesome forum users! 🙂
Over the last 6 months or so, there have been many changes in how we approach GR's. We have introduced Slow-Mo GR's, and have scheduled GR's every 2 weeks rather than weekly. We appreciate that these changes have taken a while to get used to, so on behalf of all of the mods and staff, a massive THANK YOU to everyone for working with us during these changes!
Join us on Monday 25 February at 7:30pm AEDT, as we reflect on the impact of these previous changes, as well as brainstorm new ideas for running GR's. Everyone is welcome - whether you've just joined up, or whether you've been a member since forever.
Look forward to seeing you on the night! Any questions, please feel free to ask below!
Late last year, we changed from weekly to fortnightly GRs: Which do you prefer? Why?
For me it's not so much a matter of preference as a matter of what's realistic. I loved it when we had weekly GRs because you get twice as many topics to read about, but it's also twice as much organisation. It can also be difficult to come up with enough topics sometimes when people don't suggest any (don't want to repeat ourselves too often) so again it comes back to a matter of engagement 🙂
@DirtWitch your advice is super helpful! Thank you so much for your input! You're definitely right when you say GRs aren't for everyone. I definitely think I'm leaning towards the "aren't for me" recently. It's a great observation that people come to RO for specific reasons, and sometimes two hour (though we've been leaning more towards one and a half than two) chats just are too much to be worthwhile for people, if that makes sense.
hey @N1ghtW1ng , I think what you said makes a lot of sense and I'm glad that there's someone who can relate to my sentiments 🙂 It's just really hard because it's great to see everyone put in so much work and thoughts into designing GRs and the concept behind GRs is amazing, but sometimes it does feel like the amount of effort put into them isn't [whoops, I had to make an edit to the original!] proportionate to how much attention/need there is from the community.
@lokifish I agree with you that slow-mo GRs are a sort of happy medium in response to some of the existing feedback on GRs. I think it's a great example of the RO team growing and responding to feedback, and I'm sure we will only continue to improve from here 🙂
Also I'm paranoid that my last reply to you came across as a bit passive aggressive and I totally didn't mean it that way 😞 text is hard to interpret haha
hey @lokifish, your reply didn't come off as pass agg at all; it was a great point about how the RO community is already responding and growing to our user's needs 🙂
I definitely wouldn't go as far to say that the way we run GRs isn't appropriate for the forum community anymore, I would just echo @Jess1-RO 's point that people are coming here with unique needs and situations. In that way I think maybe a good approach is to think about what we want to achieve with specifically GRs--do we want to use them for members to get to know each other? To give specific advice/guidance? etc., versus what we hope the achieve with our other forums.
I think another approach might be to think about what we expect to come out of GRs, and adjust our expectations accordingly to our current situation 🙂
@Jess1-RO aww thanks! You're making me blush
@N1ghtW1ng that's a great question! I guess I think of GRs as a blend of the light and serious topics we have at RO; it's a way for us as a community to have a chat and give each other support, and share things from funny and lighthearted to some more serious stuff.
I personally think GRs can be a really great way for shyer or more lonelier members of RO to reach out and to feel comfortable expressing themselves, but I can't say for sure that they are a better way for members to do that compared to our hanging out and games threads. Another thing to consider is that because we're on the Internet, we're all anonymous so people might already feel comfortable talking about heavy things because they can use a pseudonym, and this is something I've seen a lot of users do.
I guess in the end I don't really have a specific answer as to what I want GRs to achieve, because I feel like a lot of different parts of the website are already so diverse and multifunctional. As I've said before, I personally don't think I have the personality to mesh well with GRs, so it's likely that I am missing a key element to the purposes of GRs that other more frequent users will experience. But I think in the future it would be an interesting idea to maybe find out how much our general users (outside of builders and mods) are aware of GRs and their purpose 🙂
aww thanks @N1ghtW1ng , I'm happy to help in whatever way I can 🙂 a huge thank you to you, @lokifish , and @Jess1-RO for helping out with this and being so thoughtful and responsive!
I second @N1ghtW1ng's question
Can I just say, @DirtWitch , that your skills in being able to break down a big concept into really distinct parts and communicate them back is really awesome! I love learning/seeing how other's problem solve and am so in awe of your analysis skills
On that note, we will be wrapping up for tonight but keeping this conversation open for any more thoughts or ideas!
Based on the suggestions and feedback tonight, we will be posting an anonymous google form later this week to get your ideas and feedback on what we want to get our of the GRs and ideas on how we can achieve this aim! We will post the link to the google form here as soon as it is ready
Thank you to everyone joining and reading the conversation tonight! It has been such a productive conversation Also a huge thank you to @mrmusic for getting this conversation started this week
Last questions for tonight: What do you think GRs could look like in future? Are there ways we could be working differently to achieve the same goal? Put on your creative hats- no idea is too big
Do you prefer Slow-Mo GRs (over a week) or regular GRs (one night only)? Why?
Like @Jess1-RO said, there are pros and cons to both. Personally I prefer the slow mos because it's easier for me to jump into the chat at some point. They're a pain to organise though if you don't have lots of people helping out throughout the week
Plus organisation is hard and interest seems to be dropping, but that could just be me.
Focus is hard when reading super long posts of texts @N1ghtW1ng ! I like @lokifish idea of the gif/image challenge