Title
Provide Alternate Methods Of Creating & Modifying Friend Groups For Journals and Communities
Short, concise description of the idea
Provide alternate methods of creating and modifying friend groups for journals and communities by revamping the editgroups.bml page or allow additional commands in the admin console.
Full description of the idea
Some users and communities utilize the friend group option to set privileges in regards to tagging posts. There are currently two methods to set the friend groups:
1) The editgroups.bml page (
http://www.livejournal.com/friends/editgroups.bml) - Used to set-up and modify friend groups (works for both journals and communities).
2) The admin console (
http://www.livejournal.com/admin/console/) - Used to modify friends (does not work for communities as there are no commands for it currently).
The above two methods do not work, however, if you have a very large friend's list or if you have many members in your community. In order to even set-up a group, you need to visit the editgroups.bml page. If you have a lot of friends / members, the page won't even load to create a group (because the current behavior is to list out every single friend / member users have).
Therefore, for those with many friends and members, I suggest that LiveJournal modify the method in which friend groups can be made. Here are a couple ideas which may be feasible:
1) Make it so the editgroups.bml page does not have to load every single friend / member you have at once. Possibly make it load a partial list at a time (or use a drop-down list) and then you can flip through and assign users to friend groups / create groups.
2) Make it so that groups (for both journals and communities) can be initially set-up using the admin console.
3) Make it so the admin console can be used for communities. Currently users can add / remove members using the "friend add / remove user group" command, for example. Communities cannot use this or any command.
An ordered list of benefits
- Large communities and those with many friends will finally have the ability to set-up groups.
- Large communities and journals can finally take advantage of setting it up so only certain users can tag posts.
- Users who use alternative access methods (such as screen readers, voice command software, mobile devices, mouseless-input, etc.) would be able to use the editgroups.bml page (provided the way it loads is modified) or be able to use the 'Friend Groups' function via other methods (e.g. admin console).
- More efficient methods for all users / journals to access / utilize friend groups.
An ordered list of problems/issues involved
- Time for developers to research and put something into place