Discuss settings for this Google Group

[Jack Kelly]

I've finally gotten round to putting together this online discussion forum for energy disaggregation!  At the moment, I have opted for the following settings... please let me know if you disagree with any of these settings...

• Anyone can join the group immediately.  However, all new members will have their posts moderated.  The aim here is to try to catch any spam before it hits the group, so the group itself remains fairly high quality.
• Google Groups allows you to use either tags or categories to organise the group.  I opted for categories because it makes the structure more explicit and should make it easier to use.  I recognise that tags are a more powerful approach to categorising topics (because a topic can only belong to exactly one category but can belong to any number of tags).  But I like that categories are shown on the front page.  One slight disappointment is that it is not possible to subscribe to get email updates on specific categories (but you can subscribe to specific threads).

I did consider using Google+ Communities instead of Google Groups.  There are some rumours that Google might kill Google Groups in favour of Google+ Communities.  Google+ Communities certainly looks more modern.  But you can't read / write Communities posts from email.   Hence people have to actively check Google+ in order to keep up to date with the community, rather than having the option of having updates pushed into their email inboxes.

[Jack Kelly]

one thing that bothers me about using categories instead of tags is that, when you first land on the front page for the group, there is no way to see the most recent posts (across all categories).  Instead you have to drill down into individual categories... hmmm.... maybe it would be better to use tags.

[Jack Kelly]

I was wrong... you can see all new posts by going to https://groups.google.com/forum/#!categories/energy-disaggregation.  So I'd vote to stick with categories.

[Jack Kelly]

I've been thinking more about categories vs tags.  I think I'm leaning towards tags now.  There are lots of potential posts that require more than one classification.  I have changed the group to use tags now.  Let me know if you disagree!