Just like it makes sense to distinguish between different types of badges, there should also be different types of groups (in badges, it’s called “groups” so I guess I’m talking about “group groups”). Is this something that’s already on someone’s to-do list?
To be more specific: groups can be based on all kinds of criteria, e.g. geographic location, occupation, special interest etc so it would make sense to list them on the /groups page according to those criteria, right? I would even wish to have separate groups pages for each group group à la /groups/country. (BTW: that would be a nice feature for the badges too: /badges/community, /badges/posting, etc)
I think I understand what you’re getting at.
Currently Badges are grouped into Bronze, Silver, Gold and Custom.
Though this choice of grouping could be debated IMHO it works and is a concept that is easily understood,
But I don’ think anything similar would work for Groups, that is, it would be difficult to come up with a one size fits all scheme. At least nothing that I can think of at the moment.
Maybe a parent child approach similar to categories would be better than grouping groups?
Maybe a way to order them would be good enough?
As for separate pages, those already exist unless I’m not understanding what you’re saying
This is a good idea - on our site we have so many groups, and we use them for a variety of purposes. displaying them like badges is helpful. Right now we are able to (mostly) achieve that on our site by using a particular naming convention for groups… but it would be nice to be more intentional about the ordering like we are with badges.
You mean because that allows you to create some ugly group names for sorting the list?
Problem is that if you hide the group names it might be confusing for people to understand the sorting logic. Also, if you allow groups to be mentioned, it might be good to show the group name (perhaps with an @ before it?
Anyway, I’d say there is some potential for a better structure of the groups page…
Something like this would be my preference, similar to what is on the site settings or users or logs page, where I can type to filter what groups are shown.
Whatever I type could be matched against @groupname, Full Group Name and Group Description.
A search box is surely nice, but it solves a different problem: it makes it easy to find a group if you know what you are looking for.
The idea with groups of groups was to make the groups page more accessible by dividing it into sections, just like on the Badges page. @tobiaseigen provides a nice example above:
