Facebook Groups

My new theory is that for "all hell to break loose" Facebook needs to have a Group or two. As long as Facebook users restrict their activity to their own pages and their "friends" a certain level of "sanity" is maintained, however, when a Group is created either Public or Private and members are accepted with very little attention to the user requesting membership, posts can be made with little regard to whether they are "on-topic" or in anyway relevant to the Group.

I can now see how "hate groups" can spring up and why they are difficult to police. By their nature of being "private" they can only be found by like-minded Facebook users.

I think that I have been wasting my time

Instead of learning how to code html and css, even coming to grips with the Wordpress Interface, it now seems that it doesn't matter are all the general public wants is to use Facebook. I am thinking of giving up on my website ventures (with respect to the village of Belchamp Walter) and to recommend that all future work should be ported to Facebook. Of course, I cannot be be part of this and I will just have to keep myself to myself. The VH website can revert back to pure Wordpress and a possible porting to Facebook in the future. I don't know how booking forms will work but whoever takes it over can do that.

Posting with photos

Due to the way that posts display on group pages and Timelines it is very easy to present photos in a confusing manner. For example, a photo of a person playing an organ in a different church to the group member from a different church. Sounds petty but this could easily made clear by adding a caption to the photograph.

This is obviously beyond the capability of most Facebook users.

More fool me! Something presented as A is actually B. No no, it is something that B will be doing at A sometime in the future. I don't know if the original post was edited to add A at the end of the text (that you can only see if you click on "read more"). I really don't care - I could look but this would be just wallowing.

Belchamps and Surrounding Villages Community page

When I first came across this I saw a bandsv URL which was not immedeatly obvious what it was.

Although the Facebook Group is "Public" you still have to be a Facebook user to access it without getting the pop-up that tries to get you to become one!

In addition, I have also noticed that the posts I see on the Community pages are different if I am logged in and I access the page fom my profile. This would not be obvious to those that administer the Community page and it goes to explain why I am seeing some pretty strange posts that don't really seem to be related to the immediate area. I thnk that this is a good illustration of the algorithm that looks for posts that are related to where Facebook thinks I am located and for things that I might be interested in. The profile I use to "spy" on the Communtity page does not have a lot with regards to geographic location apart from what Facebook determines from my IP address.

Is the Community page truly "Public"?

I am pretty sure that the Admins of the page think that it is!. However, you still have to be a Facebook user not to have the "nag-box" displayed if you happen to search for the page and try and access it. Sure, you can create a Facebook Profile, even a "fake" one, but the trouble with that it that it is more than likely to give you a distorted view of page and the creation of a "fake" profile is beyond the capabilities of most users. In any case, you will be encouraged to "join" the group even though you have no intention of making any posts.