
Newsvine is fundamentally about the democratization of news. Its most foundational promise is to provide its users with a platform by which each person can define the set of news that is important and meaningful to them. You no longer have to wait for a major media company or newspaper to tell you what's news: you get to both decide for yourself as then share that news with the community at large and with your friends.
In Newsvine's first several months, we've succeeded in several key areas which allow us to take this huge next step:
Up until now, however, there has been only one community. The community is comprised of the people who visit main sections of Newsvine and/or contribute news which makes it into a main section. Back when the Newsvine community was small, this wasn't so much of a issue, as there was room for everyone to make it onto the front page from time to time. However, as Newsvine has grown, it's become much more difficult to get front page exposure.
As well, if Newsvine is going to fulfill its foundational promise of the true democratization of news, there needs to be a place for everyone to define the news that is important to them, and to invite others to participate in the discussion and dissemination of news.
To address this opportunity, Newsvine today introduces Newsvine Groups BETA. Since public launch, we've never given the "beta" label to anything, but this project is extremely complex from an architecture and interface standpoint and we fully admit that we haven't gotten everything perfect yet. It's been a three-month project so far -- our largest since launch -- and we're sure that in the first several days of using it, the Newsvine community will have plenty of feedback as to what should be changed, improved, or simplified.
This release is actually three releases in one:
Each user can now create Public and Private Groups to reflect their interests and the interests of their friends. Each group has its own front page at "http://yourgroupaddress.newsvine.com" and you can invite others to join and contribute with only a few clicks. Only members can contribute, but in a Public Group the Group's front page and all content within it is viewable by the general public. A sample use for a Private Group would be if you had some friends with whom you enjoyed discussing politically sensitive issues. Each member could write, seed, and read articles within your group and nobody else would be able to see them. A sample use for a Public Group would be if you were a Duke basketball fan and you wanted to gather together the best information resource for Duke basketball fans around the world.
Note there are now three places an article can be published to: the user's column (this happens automatically), "All of Newsvine" (this has been the default behavior up until now), and any Groups the user decides to publish to. Thus, when a user is publishing an article, he or she may continue to publish to his or her own column, "All of Newsvine", *and* whatever the appropriate group is... thus minimizing any change in publishing workflow.
Let's say you just have a small group of people with whom you like to share articles with. Your immediate family, for instance. You don't want to set up a Private Group for your family and you don't want your own front page. You just want the ability to share and discuss articles with them from time-to-time. For this functionality, we are introducing "Friend Lists". You can maintain as many Friend Lists as you'd like and adding people is as simple as typing in an email address or Newsvine username. Once a Friend List is created, you can then choose to publish any article or seed to it. A notification will go out to everyone on your Friend List and with one click, they can join your private discussion.
Newsvine Groups represents a major milestone in aggregation of news sources as well as giving users the tools they need to define and discuss the news that is important to each individual. With this release we're one step closer to fulfilling Newsvine's vision of democratizing the news.
During these first few days, we've allowed several users to create Groups but have temporarily frozen the creation of new Groups. This test period will hopefully only last a few days, but if any major problems cropped up, we wanted to make sure we only had five groups to adjust instead of 500. So head on over to the Newsvine Groups page (available in the black navigation bar at the top of the screen) and Newsvine Groups Help and get ta' groupin'! We'll open up Group creation as soon as the tires are sufficiently kicked...
Great going, guys. Been waiting for this!
So I clicked on the "Show me how" on how to make a public group and I just thought you should know that it's "indie", not "indy".
Apart from that, I am absolutely pumped about this new feature!
Ah thanks for changing that babes. :)
Thanks for all your hard work. I really appreciate all that you do.
Beautiful! Wonderful! Delightful! I can't say thanks enough.
Question:
Is it possible to have a group with both public and private functions?
Let's say, for example, that someone wanted to start a group for writers or painters, with the intention of doing collaborations. These people want to talk about projects privately. Plan them, develop them, execute them. Then, they want to publicly publish the results to Newsvine.
Can they do that? Or would they have to have a private group for the planning stages, and a public group for the end result?
hi Dennis:
Let's say, for example, that someone wanted to start a group for writers or painters, with the intention of doing collaborations.
For collaboration: you'd want to make the group public if you didn't mind the general Newsvine community reading the articles and seeds of the group. You'd want to make it private if you wanted said seeds and articles to be readable only by members of the group.
These people want to talk about projects privately. Plan them, develop them, execute them.
Okay, so for your specific example, your group would have to be private for the R&D phase.
Then, they want to publicly publish the results to Newsvine.
Once you're done, and you have an article penned in your private group and ready to share with others publically, you would then:
Make sense? You wouldn't have to rewrite the article, or cut and paste it, you could write it privately and then share it upon publication, either with "All Newsvine" or just with the public version of your group.
So we can have two versions of a group? One public, one private?
So we can have two versions of a group? One public, one private?
No. Not with the v1.0 anyways*.
Workarounds, for now, for when you want to "go public" with an article, proffered in increasing levels of effort for you, include, but are not limited to (more commas please):
There are a couple more options, but before I mention them, I recommend taking the groups functionality out for a test drive, seeing how you like it, and then let's meet in the Newsvine Community Group and talk some more.
* If it helps: the permissioning matrix w/r/t Private Groups, Public Groups, and Friend Lists, in terms of who can write, who can read, and who can converse, is relatively non-trivial [in it's complexity]. So, we made a bunch of trade-offs in the v1.0 functionality, based on anticipated usage vs. complexity vs. available feature set.
Muchos Gracias.
Sweet. I've been excited for this feature since I stumbled upon that test article about it on Friday. Of course now you've set the bar pretty high for future features. :) Keep up the good work. This is the best website I've ever been to and it keeps getting better!
I think I speak for us all when I say:
@!$%#in' A! Rock on, guys! Time to get my hands dirty...
Outstanding development. You know what a farmer is don't you? A man outstanding in his field.
These, "You are invited to join blah blah blah discussions" need to stop. Now.
Are you receiving more than what would be considered normal? How many have you received and for what?
Three in an hour period, and having nothing really to do with the group they were aimed at.
Right now, if you click on the Start New Friends Discussion tab, the default is your entire friends list. If I click that puppy, 150+ people get an email. If I click it five times....
This is an emergency. This is a major emergency. Get me two pairs of underpants and some tweezers.
this needs to change now.
Default should be off!
As groups expand this will seem like Spam central
lets be honest... most friends lists are just a list of people -- no offense - but you know what i mean
Maybe you need a "really good friends" list
chill,
we now have the ability to create as many friends lists as we like. Example: Say you and 4 friends are interested in politics in Borneo. Create a list for articles about that. (leave me off it). Say you and 10 friends are interesting in talking down neocons. Create a list for those articles, and count me in.
ahh thanks
and I like Borneonians
Ahhh...shiny new viney thingies...yippie!
The Newsvine Groups Help is an excellent example of how all Help sites should be presented. You certainly did a lot of preparation for this launch. I can see a world of possibilities all within the structure Newsvine has made available.
Thanks oldfogey! Since there's a lot to the groups functionality, we wanted to make sure people had a relatively gentle introduction... thus the tutorials.
Thank you, Newsvine.
I'll be writing an article for the Newsvine Help Group and posting it by the end of the week... but first, I have to figure out how all of this works!
*grin*
I look forward to these new Newsvine Mafias!
I mean Groups! :p
First question I've thought of that I haven't found an answer for by playing:
So, if something is seeded to a public group -- it is also available to the entire community, right? (It shows up to "all of Newsvine" and on the front page, etc?)
As such, if I navigate to an article that is part of a group, but don't get there from the group itself (for example, if I link to it from the featured articles section on the front page) is there any indication that the article -is- part of a group? It seems like some sort of indication that "this movie review" is part of "this group" would help raise awareness of the group and help encourage people to join or at least browse the group.
An indication that it is part of the group would be great!
There are checkboxes in the seeding window to allow you to publish to ALL of Newsvine, or to avoid publishing to ALL of Newsvine, while it will still be published to your column and your Group. I just did a test seed of the article we're having this conversation on to the Newsvine Help Group, and I can see that it's published to that Group, while I avoided publishing it to ALL of Newsvine. The seed also appears in my own column.
Oh, and yes, when I look at that seed, it indicates to me which Group it's published in. Although I don't know if I'm the only one who can see that indicator.
Cool, I see it now.
I have been looking also. The best I can figure is that articles will be published by individual members. I have not found anything to indicate a Group can publish as if it were the author. Not owning a group I may be outside the loop and not able to discover certain features.
oldfogey,
There is no Write Article or Seed links within the Group interface itself, so yes, all content publication will be by Group members individually, and content will appear in your column (whether you publish to ALL of newsvine or just to that Group). And if you publish to a Group, your content also appears there.
Question: Say a group wants to have a page that that is "The Best of the Vine", and say it wants to add articles authored by non-members -- is the only way to seed them?
Currently, yes. In the "near future" you will be able to clip articles into your group from elsewhere on the vine.
Excellent, josh. I had the same sort of question. :)
Didn't take long for a request for that. You bet! We're going users to grab AP stories, vine articles and vine seeds and put them in your "publication". We've even toyed around with enabling you to put them in your own column. I might have a tech goup, and want to add tech news/photos to my group column.
For now, seeding is the only option.
Actually, you're heading in the direction of one of my recommendations for Newsvine that I mentioned to you yesterday, Mark — support for Citizen Editors -- i.e. let anyone or any group upgrade their column into a News Page (or a News Pod as I was going to call them). I have a 75% written article on it. People who don't like the algorithmically generated Newsvine front page can chose from a human created one.
The regular front page would benefit too, as you'd have even richer data to drive the ranking algorithms. You can do that now with groups -- how many groups is the article published under, how popular are those groups... PageRank style link analysis.
I get that you can't publish an article to a group in which you are not a member. But what happens to your group published articles when you leave a group?
They're still in your column, but I don't know whether references to them in the Group remain or vanish.
We will be supporing non-member content in a group. Just need to add it to the interface. Admins of the group will be able to remove content.
Bug /Feature request:
Hi
When someone else puts an article of mine in their group and there are comments .....
It should show up in my comment tracker still as my article and not as theirs.
Why this matters: Often I have too many comments in the 3rd box of the comment tracker and I just purge them to keep up. But I like to respond or see interest in my articles,
THanks
Man, comment tracking just got a lot harder for the NV team.
It will show up in your CT. As for it getting too full, I suggest "untracking" some of your friends.
Thanks for the answer.
I just started a teachers group and was wondering if I'd be able to add some of the AP articles or seeds that show-up under the education tag. I wouldn't want them all, but quite a few will be interesting to teachers. I was going to ask whether this was possible because I couldn't find any info on it on the Groups Help page, but I found my answer here: Coming Soon!
Thanks.
Great job with this impressive implementation.
-Rob
Is that all? Next time I better be offered an omelette with your new features. With green M&Ms.
Question 2: Group moderation of articles published to it. Doesn't seem to be any mechanism for this, other than for members to ask an author to remove it. Any plans for this down the road? Pre-moderation: either by admin or minimal number of member up votes (I like the latter). Post-moderation: admin can remove.
Along similar lines, could you add a place on the group page to display group information, such as purpose, posting rules, etc? Maybe just adding a link in the group info box to a page akin to user bios?
By the way, awsome job guys!!! I'm not complaining :)
Final Question (for now): Do only under Public Discussion count toward an article's comment count, or do the others also get added in?
Too many tangiential discussions occur today that have nothing to do with the article or seed, but end up artificially boosting an article's popularity -- I was going to recommend prior to today that you add support for side discussions that don't count for the article. But maybe what you released today would work for this purpose?
Only public comments count. If you go to this latest article I posted, you will see there are more comments (at the moment) in the Movies, etc. portion of the conversation than in the public portion - and only those count towards the overall ranking.
Nice upgrade, will be very interesting. Congratulations.
What Powers does the Group owner have? Are they dictatorial? Can she delete Group members? Delete Posted articles? Delete comments in other people articles.
Group owners have the power to change the layout of the group page, the description of the group, the header displayed on the page, whether or not to make feeds available, and can change the domain of the group. They can also delete posted articles to the group and boot members from the group or make them administrators and give them all the same powers.
thx corey
I heard a few whispers that you guys were going to introduce a groups function but you've really exceeded my wildest expectations!!!!
You guys more than Rock! You're LEGENDS!!!
I'm looking forward to the increased richness and variety that all of this will bring.
Thanks for nurturing the vine to this point: I suspect we'll be looking at a forest of vines before too long
Now I'm off to explore and discover what else you've done.....
Thanks again!
Awesome work, guys.
While I read all that, I reflected back on how Newsvine started out a year ago, and how it's grown over the past year. I think Newsvine is one of the best examples of the future of the web, as it's such an organically grown but well-balanced and fine-tuned website, it makes all other sites of similar (even if only remotely) nature look lifeless, almost dead in the water.
Keep it up :)
I just thought of a question: Long ago, our ability to tag articles that we did not seed or write was taken away (because of all of the flaming and flame bait), but I just stumbled upon an AP article on the 'Vine that I thought would suit the Movies, etc. Group.
Is there a way that I could "tag" an article so that it could appear on the group's page? I realize that I could start a group discussion, but that's not the same thing.
You do that by seeding it onto your group's page, and then you can tag it any way you want. This also gives you an opportunity for a group-specific editorial comment or introduction. Here's an example, as seeded by Calvin Tang in the Newsvine Science group.
Ah makes sense. I thought that seeding an article on the Vine was redundant but it seems they've made it work.
Are you sure this isn't too complex? When I get someone hooked on Newsvine now, it takes them quite a while already to figure out everything that the site has. If the most frequent visitors start taking their content off into private groups, will that hurt the site?
My bet is that "private" groups will be the exception, rather than the rule.
For the "light user", groups are no different from regular columns -- they just have multiple authors.
People who only post their content only to private groups would be limiting readership. Who's going to do that unless they want their content to not have wide readership?
Are you sure this isn't too complex?
While the underlying system is complex, it is Newsvine's job to make the interface simple enough that users find the features they need most, first, and that the workflow is as simple and as intuitive as possible.
That said: we're trying to manage the complexity by providing Tutorials and the Newsvine Help Group as well as taking suggestions on how to simplify the interface.
If the most frequent visitors start taking their content off into private groups, will that hurt the site?
I don't think so. There will always be "the most popular" writers, articles, and seeds ... so even if the #1 user made everything private, that gives other users a chance to make it into the Featured Writers section.
I don't think groups will create any problems for new users, because from what I have seen they aren't displayed too prominently on the site. It is there for users to jump into if they want, but doesn't bother them if they do not.
Tom's link pointed to the front page. Correction: Newsvine Help Group
My bet is that "private" groups will be the exception, rather than the rule.
My bet is that private groups will not really deter from the average user's experience as they'll likely not even see them (until they're more well-versed in the 'Vine). :)
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