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@amy: Ah, but that's in a perfect situation... it gets much more complicated in practice.

Let's say me, Norm dplume, and Leeanne Joseph are chatting about the Mrs Blue story (which we are). A quick scan of us will tell you that the Mrs Blue thread is in the fantasy group (excludes Norm and Leeanne), and my overlap group with Norm is the Sci-fi group. My overlap group with Leeanne is TNBW-premium.

Now say Norm wants to comment on Mrs Blue. He's unlikely to start searching miscellaneous groups for a threat that just happens to be discussing her. And if he did, I bet he wouldn't be looking for an alien invasion story under her main thread in "fantasy". He'd be more likely to post under an overlap group.

Let us assume that I can't invite all my reviewers into one Mrs-Blue-related group because they're all at their limits (five or ten, pending) or from different genres and not interested.

In all likelihood, before the year is up, there will be four or five separate, concurrent Mrs Blue threads, which is more than she needs, as much as I like the concept of that.

Adding the ability to form more groups increases the dispersion factor... it increases the chance that Mrs Blue threads will pop up in different groups.

A 5-group limit forms a rather Keynesian guiding hand, steering us away from group swarms. I believe this is the gist of Sol's approach

-K

Sorry everyone!

I sat down and thought long and hard about what Sol said about wanting the premium group to be the central forum, and I'm switching sides. I now agree that fewer groups is better.

Mainly because there aren't enough (regularly) active users to populate them all.

Partially because even with a five-group limit, we're already all over the place. Already there are interesting writing discussions I can't participate in. Raising the limit threatens to increase that number.

The site appears to be urging us to be in groups. Everything I click seems to be telling me I should be in them. I had no idea until now that it wasn't the plan. Right from the main menu I was like "aw, what's my group?" and "where do I fit in the puzzle" and "Which groups will the people I know be in?"

To fix this, I'd recommend a change in the menus:

This would mean that premium and free would have to pretend they aren't groups. Viewing "My groups content" would display everything but those two groups. The main page would, by default, only show content from the one group (premium or free) and not put the word group on them (even though they technically are)

maybe even... "Groups Content" should read "Small discussion groups" or in some way give us a hint that they aren't meant for large collections of users to wall themselves away in.

MzP: I'm still tracing that problem in order to do a bug report for Sol, however I've isolated the most frequent occurrence... If I visit a group where I'm a moderator and click around in there, when I visit another group, I seem to retain moderator privilege until I next log out.

Don't waste any points on it. Here's the problem...

I can't stay in this group long term unless they raise the group limit (from 5).

The genres (groups) I write in are:
steampunk (main)
science fiction (secondary)
urban fantasy (tertiary)
romance (quarternary(?))

I would also like to participate in:
YA
Historical fiction
Fantasy
(these groups I would not post in but would like to be active in)

Counting the main group TNBW-classic, that's 8... 3 over the limit.
Factoring in that only me & Bimmy on this site write steampunk, it would be better planning to not fill 20% of my groups with a dead-end option.

Everyone else must face similar choices.
Unless they raise the limit, I don't see how this group can survive

Hmmm yes... I noticed that. I read a piece and when I reached the end, I was kicked out. Good thing I didn't happen to be typing a review or else I'd probably have had to retype it.

Ya, this is a major problem to posting. My costs to list my existing work in ONE points group is approximately 1300 pts.

You might consider grandfathering existing posts to list in points groups for a brief duration just while everyone gets settled in. OR give us the ability to post only specific chapters to new groups. That way, we can pay for only new content to appear.

What I mean is, my two current WIPs are in chapters 26 and 22.

My cost to post two chapters (27 and 23 alone) are artificially high because I must post 1-26 and 1-22 as well.

Admittedly, I could just create new novels and start at those chapters, posting links back to the originals. But this solution will make me feel hollow inside,