Membership in an MFP "Group"
chris_in_cal
Posts: 2,539 Member
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Curious on how to find MFP Groups in which you are a member? MFP does not make "Groups" easy. I argue they make it hard. Look for your "Quick Links" section, then click "My Groups" then you can select. Why three clicks and buried in "Quick Links"? Why don't your groups come up on your feed? I don't know, ask Mrs. MFP.
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99% of all MFP groups are abandoned long ago. Ghost towns of past good ideas. They can be a vital things...but typically they are not.0
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When you're a member of a group, that group or those groups are shown at the top of the groups page.
But I agree that there is a lack of interaction and information: no notifications for new topics in our groups means many groups often aren't very active.0 -
Community is not MFP, technically. Community is Vanilla Forums, with which MFP contracts in some way. IOW, MFP doesn't control the software, though they likely have some influence or input into feature requests for future releases and that sort of thing . . . kind of like we have input into what MFP does. How effective that is in either case . . . is an intellectual exercise left to the reader.
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MFP pays a contractor to operate it. As an exercise I can still lay the blame at their feet. Pay a different contractor if you want, run it internally, drop it completely....it's MFPs baby.0
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chris_in_cal wrote: »MFP pays a contractor to operate it. As an exercise I can still lay the blame at their feet. Pay a different contractor if you want, run it internally, drop it completely....it's MFPs baby.
True. Unfortunately, MFP doesn't make any money from the community part of the app. They're mostly in it to upsell people on workout plans and added tracking abilities that they put in "premium". They really don't have much investment in whether or not people are using the community or groups section. And the vast majority of people that use MFP don't use the community or groups. They just track.1 -
sollyn23l2 wrote: »chris_in_cal wrote: »MFP pays a contractor to operate it. As an exercise I can still lay the blame at their feet. Pay a different contractor if you want, run it internally, drop it completely....it's MFPs baby.
True. Unfortunately, MFP doesn't make any money from the community part of the app. They're mostly in it to upsell people on workout plans and added tracking abilities that they put in "premium". They really don't have much investment in whether or not people are using the community or groups section. And the vast majority of people that use MFP don't use the community or groups. They just track.
I would think MFP would at least get a cut of the ad dollars on the community website.0 -
chris_in_cal wrote: »MFP pays a contractor to operate it. As an exercise I can still lay the blame at their feet. Pay a different contractor if you want, run it internally, drop it completely....it's MFPs baby.
I have no argument with laying the blame at their feet. It's easy to underestimate the complexity of the application space and context. The switch to an alternative provider would be a huge upheaval - users have bailed (or said they would) with much more trivial-impact changes. I'm sure there are times when they'd love to drop it . . . but I think that would cause substantial exodus as well.0 -
MFP groups are very broken. I have not seen any MFP move to improve the experience.
An example we are given the option to sort groups by "biggest/most popular" Going into these big-popular groups, the most recent post is from months ago. Groups collect ghost profiles and abandoned posts for former MFP users, and there is no refreshing or cleaning them out.
A simple suggestion, if a group has had no post in 60 days, just simply delete it. For a user searching for a group, every search result will show Groups with some life and activity.
Eliminating newsfeeds for the new "Activities" feed is the latest MFP thing. It is really affecting many/most users. Eliminating Groups would raise no fuss.
Keeping what's broke and unused, and eliminating what's widely used is peculiar.
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When you're a member of a group, that group or those groups are shown at the top of the groups page.
But I agree that there is a lack of interaction and information: no notifications for new topics in our groups means many groups often aren't very active.
You can turn on notifications for new post in the groups you are part of in you community settings. Sadly, it is not the default.2 -
Some groups are very active.
It takes having enough members, and some active challenges, and/or daily check in threads.1 -
chris_in_cal wrote: »MFP groups are very broken. I have not seen any MFP move to improve the experience.
An example we are given the option to sort groups by "biggest/most popular" Going into these big-popular groups, the most recent post is from months ago. Groups collect ghost profiles and abandoned posts for former MFP users, and there is no refreshing or cleaning them out.
A simple suggestion, if a group has had no post in 60 days, just simply delete it. For a user searching for a group, every search result will show Groups with some life and activity.
Eliminating newsfeeds for the new "Activities" feed is the latest MFP thing. It is really affecting many/most users. Eliminating Groups would raise no fuss.
Keeping what's broke and unused, and eliminating what's widely used is peculiar.
I pretty much never use the newsfeed, but do participate in groups. Perhaps different people have differing usage patterns?
That said, I do think it's wrong-headed to eliminate the news feed, because I recognize that many people rely on it. (I had heard that internal statistics suggest it's not widely used, which surprised me - not what I had believed.)
MFP has a lot of dinosaur era code, and it's bound to be tough to maintain, let alone enhance.
The Activities feed may or may not be a good substitute for the news feed (once people figure it out); I'm not sure. I think it's part of Vanilla Forums' code, not code maintained by MFP proper. If that's so, it will be efficient to exploit that rather than continuing to maintain the dinosaur in-house.
I'm not defending MFP here, but am saying that the decision seems understandable to me when seen from their perspective. I do think many people will abandon MFP, and that the change will be especially dissatisfying following on the heels of things like getting rid of personal blogs (poorly implemented though that feature was), making the scanner premium-only, etc.
Whether that loss of users will reduce revenue enough to be meaningful in the short run, let alone long run as people join who never used news feed . . . that remains to be seen.1 -
Yeah, as far as Groups go, I used to be in a couple really active Groups. The new threads showed up in the regular "Groups" Community Tab, even in Private Groups. It is only one click to get to the Group - not sure what this complaint is really about. It's no harder than the regular forums.
As far as the big complaint about the Newsfeed, is the Activity thingy really that much harder or worse? I don't use that feature, but I would think Groups would be a far better replacement, especially a Private Group. I stopped looking at Newsfeed a long time ago. It's a bunch of spammy posts of closing diaries, doing exercise, weighing in, and MFP blogs. Not useful at all to me.1 -
Apples and Oranges.cmriverside wrote: »It is only one click to get to the Group - not sure what this complaint is really about. It's no harder than the regular forums.- "regular forums" - Categories
- Groups
cmriverside wrote: »I don't use that feature,
As non-users of the newsfeed feature I'm sure you would agree that your opinions, however free you are to express them here, carry little weight.I pretty much never use the newsfeed0 -
chris_in_cal wrote: »
Apples and Oranges.cmriverside wrote: »It is only one click to get to the Group - not sure what this complaint is really about. It's no harder than the regular forums.- "regular forums" - Categories
- Groups
cmriverside wrote: »I don't use that feature,
As non-users of the newsfeed feature I'm sure you would agree that your opinions, however free you are to express them here, carry little weight.I pretty much never use the newsfeed
But the fact that there are so many non-users is why the newsfeed is going away, so I would argue their opinion does matter. At least to MFP.1 -
Obviously you believe there are not enough newsfeed users for that feature to remain viable, and the two people here might add to your feeling, but how might we go about confirming that feeling of yours?sollyn23l2 wrote: »But the fact that there are so many non-users is why the newsfeed is going away
If you cite lack of newsfeed users as the motive for MFP action, see "Groups." It seems to me it is possible MFP removing newsfeeds has nothing to do with usage. I simply don't know. I am confident "Groups" are broken because the evidence is viewable for all to see.
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chris_in_cal wrote: »
Obviously you believe there are not enough newsfeed users for that feature to remain viable, and the two people here might add to your feeling, but how might we go about confirming that feeling of yours?sollyn23l2 wrote: »But the fact that there are so many non-users is why the newsfeed is going away
If you cite lack of newsfeed users as the motive for MFP action, see "Groups." It seems to me it is possible MFP removing newsfeeds has nothing to do with usage. I simply don't know. I am confident "Groups" are broken because the evidence is viewable for all to see.
Did I say any of that? Nope. You said their opinion doesn't matter. I said it clearly does.1 -
Chris, let me reframe this a bit.
You’re comparatively new. I’ve “only” been here five and a half years- a drop in the bucket compared to the other members on this thread.
Boards seem “active” to you, but it’s an utter ghost town here compared to what it was before they revamped the boards three years ago. The boards used to be so vibrant and active I could barely keep up. Thousands of participants. Now, sadly, I see the same couple dozen names popping up to greet folks and answer questions. New people seldom return for a second post. To say the boards are a mere shadow of what they used to be doesn’t even come close.
I don’t know why the new board format has been such a failure, but my feeling is, it sent a bunch of folks “underground”, choosing to use the private friends newsfeed instead.
Groups have been meh ever since I started here. Either dead, or extremely inactive. The one group I’m in is a bit of a nuisance to navigate, which doesn’t sell me on joining more.
I don’t want to join a group to chat with friends. Sure, with my friends list, I can see what their friends have commented on their posts. But I’m not forced to engage directly with them, particularly the male contingent that has only female friends and has to post some juvenile or double entendre comment on any photo of a pretty or shapely woman. I can roll my eyes and make a mental note to avoid that person in future if they attempt to friend me.
I like the ease and simplicity of the friends newsfeed. Yeah, it’s cluttered with exercises and diary closings (I’ve got mine turned off in settings) but there’s also great meal tips, weight loss and maintenance questions and support, and other interesting stuff. Yesterday was a vent from a frequent board poster who lifts about the disrespectful messages she gets when sharing her lifts on her social media. We support. They make body comments or snark about her weights.
I’ve got a wonderful female friend who reads religiously and posts weight loss and exercise study results I’d never find myself. The MFP newsfeed is a safe space because we’re all trying to get to or paddle to hold the same place.
You get used to scrolling past the automated posts and looking for the “real” ones.
@cmriverside I can darn well guarantee you I will not use the activity list. That’s a one-by-one thing where you have to remember the user ID (how often have I entered @mtaratoot as mrtaratoot, for example, and how many of us have numbers, underscores, dashes in our IDs?) you have to search the user and click through several screens to see the activity.
The newsfeed is a convenient, private digest of only the people I want to see. I can use the boards for generic stuff.
With a group, sure I can communicate with friends, but then their friends join and those friends’ friends join and it becomes an exponential exercise in “don’t wanna”.0 -
Yeah, I get that, springlering. It seems like a misstep if they're going to do away with the Home Feed. I haven't seen where they said that, so I thought maybe you all were speculating. Where have they posted that the newsfeed is going away?
However, the HTML has been broken on the Profile page for years. . . or is that just me? I can't format on my profile, i.e. start a paragraph - and the words just wrap to the next line in the profile with no rhyme or reason. Everyone elses' appear that way to me, too.
I dunno, it kinda sorta feels like myfitnesspal will go the way of the dinosaurs. I've had a major setback myself. For a week I haven't been able to add foods from the database. I have done the very time-consuming back and forth emails with "Support" and I'm still not able to log from the database. Luckily my personal lists still work if I use them in a very specific way, but it isn't easy by any means and if I was new I'd be gone.0 -
Extremely well hidden in the support pages:
https://support.myfitnesspal.com/hc/en-us/articles/26953529858317-Retiring-the-Newsfeed-feature-by-the-end-of-June-20243 -
Thx @Lietchi :flowerforyou:2
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chris_in_cal wrote: »
Apples and Oranges.cmriverside wrote: »It is only one click to get to the Group - not sure what this complaint is really about. It's no harder than the regular forums.- "regular forums" - Categories
- Groups
cmriverside wrote: »I don't use that feature,
As non-users of the newsfeed feature I'm sure you would agree that your opinions, however free you are to express them here, carry little weight.I pretty much never use the newsfeed
Our opinions carry exactly as much or as little as your opinion does. In terms of influencing direction of the product, both your and our opinions count very little, as far as I can see.
Let me point out that nowhere have I said I personally thought the newsfeed should go away. In fact, I said pretty much the opposite in the post you quoted very selectively:That said, I do think it's wrong-headed to eliminate the news feed, because I recognize that many people rely on it. (I had heard that internal statistics suggest it's not widely used, which surprised me - not what I had believed.)
In every case where I've commented on one of these threads - and on an early post that suggested MFP was considering this - I've said I thought it was a bad idea to eliminate the news feed, would hurt the user population, would lead to more bad press for MFP, would lead to many people bailing, etc. That prediction is now playing out, quite clearly. I did and do think it's a bad plan.
I think I'm on your side, when it comes to opinions about what should happen here. You said "Eliminating Groups would raise no fuss" I disagreed. That's all.
As an aside: Groups is a feature of Vanilla Forums, essentially a subcontractor of MFP in this situation. There is no huge motivation for MFP to eliminate groups; it is costing MFP only the testing effort and possibly minor integration changes in MFP code when Vanilla Forums makes software changes on their side. For that effort, MFP gets the Community feature, which is fairly heavily used. I think the basic Community functions are the reason MFP keeps their relationship with Vanilla Forums, which I'm sure is costing MFP noticeably big money.
I do agree with Springlering62 that Community forum use is declining, though I'm skeptical that that's mostly caused by the changes in how the Community works. I suspect it's more about the general decline of long-form text social media apps. More people are using phones, fewer relying just on physical keyboards; I think fewer people Qwerty touch-type vs. in earlier eras, too. The social media that are most popular and widely-used increasingly are short-text, hashtag-oriented, photo/video-centric. People at large don't seem to prefer typing out or reading lots of words, though there are niches where it still happens.
As I understand it now, I don't think the Vanilla Forums activity feed is any kind of realistic substitute for the news feed. I don't have a clear vision of how it will and won't work, nor do I have a clear understanding of all the implications of the newsfeed disappearing. It has been clarified that friending will still be possible, and that people will be able to access friends' diaries through that friend-list function.
I haven't heard any specific plans for creating a link from our friend list in the MFP app to the activity feed of one's friends; that wouldn't be a full sub for the news feed either, but could relieve the "remembering user names" piece. I don't even know whether it's possible.
When I want to influence someone's behavior, I think it's useful to try to understand their motivation. In this situation, how much the groups are used compared to news feed isn't a very relevant issue.0 -
I am a member of several groups. Most are not very active. Part of the issue is that notifications for new posts in a group are not enabled by default. Once it is enabled, it does show there are new posts in the group, and if you bookmark group posts, they also will show when new posts are made where the notifications for all bookmarked posts show.1
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I've had a couple of 1000 day streaks, and a couple years ago in fit of pique over trying to repair the broken old progress ticker MFP used to have, I tried some fixes which resulted in MFP locking me out of my 2010 account. @mfpchris https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/profile/1739761/mfpchrisspringlering62 wrote: »You’re comparatively new.
So, for better or worse, I've been here 14 years, and I've only gained 20 lbs. since then
I've seen some stuff.
Your thoughts on the Newsfeed, Community Categories, and Groups is spot on. 100%
BTW: I came here this morning to post that after typing in two perfunctory entries on my new "Activities" feed i got my first spam.
If any of you want a side gig, a new user "Evelyn" needs a trainer and is looking for some help. I'll pass it along to you if you want.
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rileysowner wrote: »I am a member of several groups. Most are not very active. Part of the issue is that notifications for new posts in a group are not enabled by default. Once it is enabled, it does show there are new posts in the group, and if you bookmark group posts, they also will show when new posts are made where the notifications for all bookmarked posts show.
BINGO! I only started using bookmarks to posts in the last year or so. It's how I've been able to see and responds to what interests me, and ignore the "Would you date the poster above you" and "I'm new, feel free to add me" streams.0 -
Yup, thanks @Lietchi this is it, in all it's gory detail.
I clicked onto the "Blog." Could it be that there are no user blog entries...what's there now is "How to order at <insert name of fast food chain name> restaurant, according to a dietitian." product placement ads.
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chris_in_cal wrote: »
Yup, thanks @Lietchi this is it, in all it's gory detail.
I clicked onto the "Blog." Could it be that there are no user blog entries...what's there now is "How to order at <insert name of fast food chain name> restaurant, according to a dietitian." product placement ads.
They did away with user blogs some time ago. I never read them. At the time, the boards were so active, I was barely able to keep up.
I’m bemused by all the new users who need friends. What will they do when their feed disappears within days? I feel like posting something snarky re: MFP, not the user), so have specifically stayed off that train of thought.1 -
Moving between the personal area and the community forums has some issues.
Just today, took a bit of hit and miss to find 'my groups' - Ended up going into community forums just to get back to the functional list of the groups I have joined.
I would agree that there are a majority of inactive/abandoned groups...
There are also some large active groups and multi-group challenges that serve essential needs beyond the public forums; first and foremost to be private.
But, there does not seem to be a good way to locate/sort active groups. Popular with thousands of inactive members and no current actvity is not the same as active groups created awhile ago that are buried in search results with the ghost groups.
I would like to see navigation and search fixed. I would not like to see groups abandonded. Perhaps if things were fixed up, maybe groups would be used more and more effectively.3 -
Adventurista wrote: »Popular with thousands of inactive members and no current actvity is not the same as active groups created awhile ago that are buried in search results with the ghost groups.
Bingo! Exactly. These are the vast majority.
You prescription is correct to -- to be useful, enjoyable, functional, the sort and search needs to be changed.
A group where all of the current members have not logged into MFP is over a year (a ghost group) is a good candidate not to appear near the top. There are probably thousands of those. It's a simple program change. Open source software allows MFP to do this at any time.0 -
Agree @chris_in_cal
... or even to delete ghost groups for non-participation after an extended period of time, although that may disappear old treasured resource/content...
Not sure I have noticed people talking about this issue with groups, but the current sort/search is a definite obstacle when I have tried to find something of interest. I have found more groups through word of mouth/advertising posts such as time-limited challenges advertised in the challenge forum.4
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