So I’m a member of several groups now, but from what I see the groups are dead-ish. There’s so few way to manage or promote activities in a group. I mean you have:
- A chat: not many people go to Chat, and when they do they rarely switch away from English room.
- A ladder: we already have site-wide ladder which is already a superset.
- Group notifications: nothing to do with us commoners.
- Group tournament: this one is good.
Many group I’ve joined was created and very soon went dead. It doesn’t provide any support for people of (probably) common interest. It’s hard to have interactions and with its current state, English chat room and private messages already covered all that it does.
I only know about the same mechanic in KGS (The room - which is both “group” and “chat”). Although it’s not the best for group admin (I’ve managed a room for my university room there, and later discarded it), one way it’s better than OGS’ group is that it has a “local” sense. When you enter a room, you can see who’s talking to who, and who’s playing with whom - just like an irl go club.
Occasionally a newbie would come up and be like “Senpai teach me!” and then a Senpai will jump out and be like “Let me show you how it’s done”. Then people see a new game was created in the room, people jump in to join the kibitz, and then Senpai lost because obviously the other guy was a sandbagger, and he logged his main account which is 5dan and people laugh like mad.
Note that it is only fun for everyone because it’s a small community, you’re safe trolling someone you know, and no one feel bitter (ok maybe sometime the Senpai will feel bitter but then everyone will just buy more popcorns).
On OGS it’s a bit hard because most people only have 1 tab opened for OGS, so you either play or chat. You have to be actually dedicated to chatting to have 2 more tabs opened (for English chat and the group chat).
For OGS, is there anyway to implement a sense of community in group?
“Group-specific games” could be a good start but what I mean more importantly is, like you know guild in MMO games? When you’re online you kinda have a passive acknowledgement of what’s going on in the guild. I’d rather join only a few group I care about and have constant feedback from it, than join a whole bunch of dead group with rarely any interaction.