Groups on OerSocial, and when a conversation should leave the main feed

The home feed is for posts that can meet a general audience. Some conversations are better in a group: a small set of people, a shared project, a topic that would bore everyone else if it hit Home twenty times a day.

What a group is for

A group is a shared space with members. Use it for a project, a local scene, a class of posts that have a reason to live together. A group named after a banned topic is still banned. Creating a group does not create a policy exception.

If you are organizing a real-world meetup, say where and when, and do not demand personal documents in the group as a condition of joining.

What still belongs on Home

Announcements that any follower might want. Finished work. Questions that benefit from strangers. If you post the same fundraising pitch in Home and in five groups every morning, that is spam in two places.

Membership

Invite people who asked. Do not scrape follows and drop everyone into a group they did not join. People ignore those rooms, and they report them.

If a group is public enough to be found, write a description that tells a visitor what happens there. "General" and "chat" are how rooms fill with off-topic links.

Moderation inside a group

Group members still have to follow site-wide rules. Hate, sexual content, and scams are not allowed because the group is "private." Report the post. Email support@oersocial.com if the whole room is the problem.

When to leave the feed

Move to a group when the thread is only useful to a dozen people, when you are coordinating details, or when Home would be a bad archive. Stay on Home when you want discovery.

OerSocial should not become a maze of empty group pages. Create a group when you have a reason, not when you want another URL.