Shal Farley wrote:
. . . . . . . . . .
However, since I've opined that hashtags may not be useful in all
groups, I'll ask about the con side of the question.
What motivates you to prevent the occurrence of hashtags in your group's
message Subjects? Or is that even what you're trying to do?
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I have a group that has operated fairly well for almost 19 years. The members are typically older and the focus is historically based. The reality is, a lot of members may fade away with time and our membership may not be sustained at the level it is now. I have received a lot of positive feedback from group members since the transfer indicating they like the cleaner, more understandable layout. Limiting the group to plain text was a conscious decision knowing that some members don't see as well as they used to, so plain text allowed their systems to use their own preferred settings.
Because of the group history and demographic, I am concerned that hashtags would just add a level of complexity and confusion that would simply serve to slow down participation. These guys can generally use search and that seems to solve most of the need.
One big change we did make was to allow attachments, and we're still struggling with that change. A significant portion of my users are what one might call 'not technically sophisticated'. I had one member send an attachment of two images with a total size of 17 Mb, because he had no concept of file size. Needless to say, I'm working at educating a certain portion of the group on technical issues.
In this case, simple is better. And, I would add, we've seen a significant increase in traffic since the transfer to groups,io.
Dano
D R Stinson