Hello Everyone

As you may have heard, Ning will be moving to the new Ning 3.0 format in the near future.

From what I've seen so far, it's going to offer us some great advantages and I'm excited about the transition. Ning is currently working on migration software and once that is operational we will have a maximum of a year in order to complete the transfer from our current 2.x site.

I have just set up a test site so that I can begin learning the new format and createthe new design for us.

In order to make this transition as smooth as possible, Iam going to need help from all of the members and the first task is a clean up of our Groups & Members.

Groups:

Over time we have amassed anumber of Groups that have been set up but are not currently being used. If you are the Creator or Administrator of such a group please consider removing it. You can find more information about Group Deletionsat Manage Your Group .

If you are a member of this type of group and the Group Creator is no longer a member of this site you can contact me (or leave a note here) and I will remove it.

I haven't seen the new functionality for Groups in 3.0 yet but I understand thatit's going to provide a lot more functionality including better Group Administration Transfer

Members:

The Ning 3.0 Basic Plan that we are going with provides for a maximum of 1,000 members. The next level up(which allows for 10,000 members) is twice the price and therefore currently out of our financial reach.

We currently have 829 members so we are approaching the limit. If you have multiple accounts, I would ask you to please remove all but the one(s) that you most require. For most members, one account really should be sufficient.

Please see Leave a Ning Network for instructions. Removing your content is a personal decision but you may want to leave your contributions on the site. You do NOT have to remove your content.

If you are aware of members that are no longer involved with Royal Courts but have not removed their memberships, you can contact me.

Any questions? Just give me a shout! Thanks!!

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I'm trying to erase a group i founded tow years ago but the delete group option doesn't appear, what else can I do to eliminate it?

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Hi Aimee

Other group administrators have been having the same problem.

You can either list the group name here or message it to me and I will remove it.

Thanks!

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I've been working on the new 3.0 site since Wednesday andI'm starting to feel more comfortable making my way around. There's certainly a lot to learn and new features are still being introduced.

Beta testing for 3.0 Groups went live on Thursday night and the new format & functionalityis very exciting!

Speaking of Groups, in my spare time I will start deleting those that are apparently "inactive". It's very hard for me to determine which ones they are so please continue to review your own groups.

I'm going to be removing those groups that are more than 3 months old and only havea fewmembers and limited content. I think it's fairly safe to declare those inactive unless I hear otherwise.

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Tatiana, would it make sense to simply put out a message asking that any group admin. who wants to keep a group should notify you by a certain date? Any group which doesn't respond by that time could be safely deleted. You cold do the same with members...ask for members who want to stay in the Ning to send you a message -- I know that is a lot of message potentially dumping in your lap, but it does seem like this is a major challenge, figuring out who is really still here and who isn't, and asking them seems the surest method.

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Thanks for the suggestions, Aldo! I'm currently mulling them over

So far I have reduced the number of groups to 48 by removing those that had limited membership, no recent activity and no content. If I have made a mistake with any of those removals it will be easy to set them up again as no content was there to be lost.

With the groups that do get migrated, I'm thinking of putting them all in "suspension" so that Administrators will have to contact me in order to activate them.

I'm thinking of doing the same thing to members that have been inactive for a long period of time, hold them in suspension and reinstate them by request.

It's an interesting challenge for certain!

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ah, that's an interesting solution, with the ability to hold inactive groups and members in suspension and ask them to "opt in" to remain in the community. That would certainly make for a lot fewer messages getting dumped in your lap than if everyone had to opt in.

I think the key is making it an active choice to remain in the community, rather than something passive, or forcing you to do too much guesswork. That's not fair to you. And yes, you are correct that it is a fair assumption that those who post regularly (or at least periodically in the last six months) or who made a donation are very definitely opting in by contributing to the dynamic nature of the community. At the same time, yes, there are some folks who due to shyness or a lack of time may never have posted, but who do enjoy reading the posts and like to feel they belong to the community. Giving them a means to let you know they are still out there and care is important.

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Exactly. I'm a lurker on quite a few sites, I hardly ever post but I make use of the information and even pass it along so though I may look "inactive" I'm not.

The last thing I want to do is offend my fellow lurkers and make them feel like they don't belong.

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Group Clean Up:

It took a while (I had to look at each group individually)but I think that a good portion of the "inactive" groups have been deleted. I removed 70 in total by looking at Group Size (less than 11), Group Age (more than 3 months) &Group Content (little or no content other than the Group Description).

If your groupwas removed in this processbut you still have plans for group activity in the very near future please feel free to create a new group.

Remaining Groups:

Thecurrent plan is to retain the remaining groups unless I hear from their administrators. This means that they will be transferred over to the new site where they will have to go through an activation process. We would have to do this in any case since the Group functionality is so different with 3.0 that it's going to require some additional setup.

Member Clean Up:

I've started deleting Member accounts, starting with those accounts older than one year whose last site visit was the same day as their registration date.

I have a long list (over 300) of Members who haven't visited the site since 2010. I'll do some culling here but it'sa verytime consuming as I have to look at every profile to try to determine if the member may potentially return.

In General:

This is a painstakingprocess and there's no doubt that I'm going to make some mistakes. Ihope that these will be viewedas just that, errors in the process and not some personal attack or insult. I really would appreciate the benefit of the doubt which I believe I've earned in my four years as site moderator.

Change is never easy but it'sdefinitely going to be worth all the effort!

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Hello Catherine

I've replied to the Group question below. Your group will remain for the time being (unless you ask for its removal) and will go through an activation process after site migration.

Thanks also for the kind words

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Tatiana, we really appreciate all your hard work on this.

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Thank you, Aldo

btw ... you can keep the bottle of Tylenol ... perhaps it will be useful after all the beer, onion rings & chocolate

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I am a lurker now, as well,here and always come and read, but rarely post now but would like to keep my membership.

Thank you

desireme

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Thanks for dropping in to tell me, Desireme.

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Yes Tatiana, your work on the NING is much appreciated )

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I can't find that group, I think is erased. Thank you!

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You're welcome, Aimee

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Thank you, Leena

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Since you've brought it up, Stormy, the answer is that the cow has to go.

Given that we now have a membership limit (determined by our financial means) I don't think it's fair that this membership spot is being takenby your alt.

I would appreciate it if you would remove this account.

... or should I say remoooooove ... cow humour ...

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Does this mean we will have to pay $25/month now?

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Since we were able to raise enough for an Annual Subscription, we renewed that on July 21st.

You can reference the July 11, 2013 post in Royal Courts Ning: 2013 Fundraiser

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Many thanks go outto all the members that have helped with the clean up of Groups & Members!

It's a big task and we've been making good progress.

Groups are in much better shape than when we started in July.

We still need to work on Members especially individuals removing their own alts. This is the best way to ensure that content does not get inadvertently removed.

Though we've managed to clean up quitea few alt & inactive accounts we've also had almost an equal number of new people joining the site so our membership number is remaining steadily over the 800 mark.

If you still have alt accounts hanging around, please take a moment to remove them. See Leave a Ning Network for instructions. Removing your content is a personal decision but you may want to leave your contributions on the site. You do NOT have to remove your content.

Thanks!!

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Hello Mercury

My definition of an "alternative" or "alt" account is any additional account created by a person that is already a RC member.

Ning already restricts the use of email so that we shouldn't have anyalt accounts with the same email address.

Restriction by IP address is not as straight forward as therecan bea many-to-many relationship between a Person and an IP address, i.e. One Person may have many IP Addresses and an IP Address may be used by many People. So though IP address may be a good indicatorit isnot absolutely foolproof which means the process cannot be automatedas itrequires that I make a judgement call.

For the most part, the removal of alt accounts is going well because the large majority ofmembers, reasonable folks that they are,understand the necessity and are doing their part to help by removing their own accounts.

For those that absolutely refuse,especially the sockpuppets that pop up now and again, I remove them manually.

It's an ongoing process which I expect will continue as long as the RC site exists

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Just a reminder that we are trying to limit membership to one account per person.

Seeing that's it's spring, perhaps some cleaning up of your alt accounts is in order!

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If we transfer our content from our alt account to our main account on here, is that okay?

There's quite a bit *cringes and laughs* with my alt and a lot of the comments and such will be lost then?

I understand and will definitely comply of course, no worries

Cheers,

Leena

Officially outing myself, I am a woman in RL and Leena is the main but I'm also Hugo Dieter.

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Waves hello to Leena/Hugo )

Yes, it's fine to transfer content. The simplest thing might be to have me "suspend" the account which removes it from the members count but keeps all the content there. Then you won't lose anything and you can keep referring to it.

Give me a shout if you would like to do that.

Thanks!

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Hi Tatiana,

Will all of the links on his Ning page still work if Hugo's account is suspended?

Leena

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Here's an example of a page that was "suspended" (I wish I could use the word archived because that's more accurate) because it was an alt account: Duchesse Courtsie de Champagne's Page

As you can see, though the body of the page is blanked out the content still remains on the site and can be accessed via the left-hand column. So all Discussions, Blogs, Videos, etc. remain.

If the "suspension" was lifted the body of the page would return as well.

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