Finally! Google is dumping Google+. Can we use facebook groups now please?

+7 votes
476 views
in The Tree House by Living Troy G2G6 Pilot (174k points)
Facebook is better

Facebook cannot replace Google groups as functionality in working in projects communications wise. It is an inherent part of how projects have been designed now on WikiTree. I have many times wished to leave Facbook, but if there is one thing that it is very handy in, is keeping up and keeping in the loop with Genealogical communities and other fora. I would certainly endorse Facebook as a community group for WikiTree For me it would be and Google groups and Facebook.

Thanks! I belong to several of those and many more facebook genealogy groups for various areas of the world. I also join place facebook groups, like Alia nel Mondo for my husband's family's hometown in Sicily to meet cousins.

4 Answers

+16 votes
Google+ is not the same as Google Groups.

Not everyone is on Facebook. But anyone can join a Google Group, as it's essentially a mailing list.

I would oppose using Facebook.
by Eric Weddington G2G6 Pilot (514k points)
Google groups is really a pain to use - FB is much easier to navigate groups -

goggle group fan so - how do you not accidentally open several items before you scroll to where you actually want to see something?

when you DO click and open a thread - why do you not see the entire contents of that?  Where do you click to see the rest?  I find random is all that seems to work for me - add me to the HATE google groups batch
Navarro, I don't understand what you are seeing. When I open a Google Groups discussion within a group, I get the entire list of what has transpired within that discussion in chronological order. Not all get expanded so as to not have several pages scrolling off the screen, but you have the author and timestamp of each comment. This assume using the browser interface. If it is in your email, then you have whatever tools you have there. I don't see anything random at all.
Firefox browser is what I use - guess I should try another or something - no I wish Doug - It opens the conversations when I am trying to scroll - and if there are a couple of replies I spend twenty minutes trying to open it up and see what is what - will try my other browser and see if it makes a difference because I will tell ya - I would go in there and participate more if it displayed properly
I agree with Eric.
There are also some of us who cannot reach facebook or other social media sites while working, but can receive updates via email due to Google Groups.
I hate FB groups.  I'm only in the WT one as a "for fun" thing, and can't imagine using it as an official outlet.
I'm not on Facebook and nwill not be.
I really don't need 600 more emails in my email box. Facebook makes it easy because info I don't need just scrolls away. And it is easier to contact others for chat.  I joined so many listservs in the 1990s that I could not find my real email. Facebook is so much better organized.  I say dump Google Groups and use facebook and find more cousins! I make facebook friends with anyone in Sicily who has my husband's surnames (23 of them). It helps me connect our family.
Sharon, you realize that emails can be turned off and you can visit the online site like a forum, right?
Yes, and visiting their online forums is so boring. No one is there. It's facebook for me!
+13 votes
I doubt if Wikitree will ever make that change Sharon, but for what its worth I am also much more comfortable working in facebook groups than in google groups. I am involved in many facebook groups for both genealogy and genetic genealogy and contribute actively. On google groups it has taken me months to understand why I was not able to access groups despite my many attempts to do so and I have now had to start using two separate e-mail addresses to be able to to get more than a string of disjointed e-mails from the projects I tried to join.
by Lynda Crackett G2G6 Pilot (666k points)
+12 votes
A Facebook group is a far better choice if there is collaborative work to be done. However, one must be a member although that does not mean you ever have to do anything more than participate in your chosen group.

Google groups is fine for communicating with others, but does not allow for sharing of documents or images. All one needs to join is an email address so, in that respect, is more inclusive.

So, the bottom line is if you want to work together go with Facebook and if all you want is a communications hub then stick with Google.
by Living McCormick G2G6 Mach 5 (59.5k points)
I've never had problems sharing docs on Google Groups. With a Facebook Group, how do you keep multiple topics sorted out. With Google Groups you can either let your email reader keep them sorted for you or use the browser interface and have all separate discussions sorted for you. Collaboration is no more difficult than with FB and you don't get all of those targeted advertisements that occur on FB even in closed groups.

I do use Facebook for some things but find that the typeof collaboration that WT needs for some of the projects I'm in would not work well with FB unless you create a new group for each topic.

There is no way to please everyone but I wouldn't want to try and really collaborate on multiple, complex topics simultaneously in a FB group. Using comments in FB isn't quite the same as having a good email thread going. Lately, FB doesn't always notify you of new items appearing in the groups you are in. This even occurs for admins of groups. Sometimes I don't see the posts until 24 hours later but others have been commenting. Neither system is perfect.
Hi Bill,

Of course you can't collaborate on Google Groups, because it's mostly just a mailing list.

But Google has some excellent collaboration tools around. The G Suite Tools: Google Docs, Sheets, Slides, Sites, Calendar, etc., all stored in Google Drive, plus Google Hangouts. Google Groups is a great way to provide access control (permissions) to all of the above, too. They all work together, and make real-time collaboration easy to do. If you're using the Chrome browser, then it's even easier to do.
Yes, Eric. Groups is just one part of Google's tools. I've found the realtime aspects of updating documents/spreadsheets very useful as is the ability to have text/audio/video chats when they might help. I don't particularly care for Google but they do have some good tools.
they would stay sorted out - the posts would follow on the thread the original was posted on as replies -
and I hate google because of tracking and ad targeting and stuff - FB is bad on that too - there are other places - mewe might be something
Everyone tracks. Privacy on the Internet is an illusion. If you want privacy you have to stay off of it. I'm pretty well versed in the Internet and watched it being born. Used its predecessor before it became the Internet. Things are a bit better in Europe.
Yes, and privacy can be a pain in the neck when you are trying to do genealogy. Folks who won't give their info can be real road blocks and brick walls. I would rather give out a lot of info, and just keep my finances off line. The more info we have about our cousins and ancestors, the easier it will be to build one global family tree. And if they track me, so what? Targeted marketing means I only get ads I care about and not ads for items I am not interested in and causes that do not concern me.
+22 votes

I am very opposed to the use of Google Groups (which, sadly, is not going away) for discussions by WikiTree projects. Using Google Groups to silo off information about WikiTree projects (or anything about WikiTree) onto a different site strikes me as being the exact opposite of collaboration: it's taking information that relates to WikiTree, and locking it away from the vast majority of WikiTreers. 

Yes, I'm well aware that Google Groups is free. But there are people who either can't use it (due to it being blocked by their internet access provider, or because their employer forbids the use of any Google product for security reasons), choose not to use it (whether for privacy reasons or something else), or who find it too intimidating (or too much of a bother) to have to join and learn yet another system.

In my opinion, group discussion of anything that pertains to WikiTree belongs on G2G: it's here, it's free, it works just fine, and it's accessible to all WikiTreers. 

And, I'm sorry, Sharon, but I would oppose using Facebook groups for exactly the same reason: it would be anti-collaborative, because it would exclude WikiTreers. (Besides which, I ditched Facebook two years ago because it had become such a spam- and hate-fest, and I don't intend to return.)

by Greg Slade G2G6 Pilot (669k points)
I agree with all of Greg's points here.  Especially the barrier to collaboration when WikiTree functions are shifted offsite.  

I would add that that Google and Facebook have not made the same commitments to WikiTree users that WikiTree has about making certain data available to us and to the public even in the event of a site shutdown.  I feel much more comfortable about WikiTree's commitment to preserving the future value of the genealogical data we are gathering and validating here, than I do about Facebook's and Google's.
I very strongly agree. The use of Google Groups has certainly prevented me from participating in projects, and I really wonder why we can't use these forums to talk.
I don't think there is, right now, a way to have different G2G groups for different projects.

And we can only follow 20 tags. And there is no ability for live communication, which is a handy way to communicate in real-time.

No, Natalie, G2G doesn't have groups per se, but that's why the home pages for most projects (except for the ones which tell people to use Google Groups) tell people to tag any G2G posts that they make with the relevant tag. Thus, up until the Canadian History Project got assimilated by the Borg, I used to follow the canada, canadian_history, and british_columbia tags, and I still follow the sources, resources, unsourced, and sourcerers tags. (Why so many tags for each project? Because not everybody remembers to tag their posts with the relevant project tag, and newbies, of course, may not even know about tags or projects at all.)

I do agree that the limit on tags we can follow is absurdly low. If you've managed to trace back your family tree for five generations, you'd have up to 32 surnames to track, and that's already well over the limit, even before you start adding in tags for projects, placenames, or any other interests. But, in my opinion, the solution to that problem is to ask Chris to raise the limit on tags we can follow, not remove the accumulated knowledge of a project from WikiTree.

On the live communication issue, I have less sympathy. We are, after all, chasing dead people, and they're not going anywhere, so it's not like anything in genealogy is so urgent that it can't wait until somebody gets back from supper or whatever.

I had to cut out almost all of my family name tags due to having to follow project tags, leader tags, etc. And I don't feel like I could keep up with more. I have enough trouble following the ones I have and seeing all of the posts.

Yes, we are dealing with "dead people" but we also do rangering and greeting and sometimes we need the team members ASAP to handle spammers, hackers, or others trying to do harm. So having real-time for those things is very helpful.
Okay, for Rangers, Greeters, and possibly Arborists, I can see the need for real-time communications, and also a need for privacy, combined with a lack of dealing with actual genealogical data, but rather discussion of what's happening on WikiTree itself right now. So for those projects, taking the discussion off G2G makes sense. But for most projects, none of those needs apply.

As it happens, I found a couple of items regarding Google Groups and security in my RSS reader. It turns out that it's possible to misconfigure a Google Group so that the contents can be scanned by search engines, and read by anyone who stumbles across them. So if your project deals with living people in any way, then you need privacy, so please make sure that your Google Group (or whatever else you use) actually is private.

(And if you're not dealing with living people, then please stay on G2G and be collaborative.)

I agree with you. I did not want to have to use Google Groups. I visit G2G every day, have a permanent tab for it on my browser and was disappointed to find that much of the discussion is being done offsite.
I agree with Deborah and the others about Google Groups not being that great to use for Wikitree projects.  I've joined several projects and been put off by the use of Google Groups myself.  It's time consuming, not to mention hard to keep up with.  I always want to do things to help, but vague explanations or what I perceive as vague and the Google Groups stop me in my tracks.  I've been helping adopted dna relatives find their family tree and was interested in adoption project, but as soon as I saw that they communicate through Google I decided not to.  There must be some way to go about it that would help more people and get more helpers for projects.

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