Improvements to Groups

[Nick, Founder (In Absentia)]

Hello,
Does anyone have ideas for how to improve Goodreads groups to make them better for book clubs?

Currently a thread is going on this at the Goodreads Feedback group. Everyone here probably has an opinion on this!

Here is the thread:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show_g...

Nick

[[deleted user]]

It's not a problem for this well-oiled club, but I see a lot of groups that have trouble getting a discussion going. Maybe Goodreads can publish a start-up guide like "Online Book Clubs for Dummies."

[Kristjan]

Donna said: Also I turned off the group digests and friend updates because I was getting too many emails, but if there was a way to distinguish so I could still get a notification if the moderator had put up the new book poll etc.

A lot of forum applications support subscriptions where you designate which conversations you are interested in following (or getting emails about). This would be great. They could do the same thing with friends too; perhaps tieing this into what is now called 'top friends.' Finally it would we wonderful is they simply allowed mods to broadcast to members who have indicated they wish to received such communications.

[Sandi]

What's "Top Friends"? I admit it, I haven't explored this site enough to learn all the tweaks.

[Kristjan]

Sandikal said: What's "Top Friends"?

If you select 'friends' from the top menu, you get a directory of all your friends. In each friend box, you will have the option of making a friend a 'top' friend. According to the help, this simply makes a priority listing so that you will see them together and first on your update page and they will also show up first on your profile (where non-top friends are probably truncated). So far, that is all it seems to do (which is not much really).

------------------------------------

Okay ... another improvement would be to either add threads to discussion or make it much easier to quote part or all of the message a person is responding to. I have run into a few where the lack of context makes it very difficult to tell what the person is talking about

[Megan]

This might be beyond the scope but I would like a "watch this thread" option--so if I post to a thread or find one particularly interesting, it could be bolded or added to my front page (where my update feeds are) whenever anyone posts to it.