Ideas for what you want here

[sharonb]

It's great to see people joining here. I hope we can shape a community site that is of use to everyone. So I am throwing out questions and ideas in the hope that people will say how they would like to see the place shaped as this is a community site!

What would you like to see here? Do people want activities - discussions - etc Do we need activities - discussions etc to be suggested/ lead by somone etc
Swaps? Highlighting eyecandy? links?

Also should we just let anyone join - i am tempted to click "the approve before joining button" as I don't want spammers or people who are not textile folks spoiling the place I will if it happens but how do others feel?

I have put up a notes area so we can share skills /tips as we learn to use this place .

It occurred to me that we might want a tips advice area. Any ideas? should it be a thread int he forum? What do you think?

[Amy]

I know that I would love to see some weekly challenges and maybe some discussions on diffrent techniques. Maybe some small swaps , like pincushions or needlebooks.
Amy

[pat winter]

I too would be interested in small project swaps,everyone sharing techniques or tutorials,eye candy,etc.
Pat

[sharonb]

I can see swaps would be a great idea - should we make it an understanding that people who want to prorpose swaps should run them

In fact do we need community guidelines on this sort of thing so people know its OK to propose ideas and feel free to run them etc?

Actually thinking this through that is another question so I should start another thread on that as I would like the community to shape the guidelines as they wish them to be.

[LINDA]

Thanks to Candi for inviting me. It sounds great. I love anything that will help us grow as textile artists. I love to see what others are doing, so the eye candy is great. At this time, I don't have time for swaps, but challenges, maybe. It stretches me to grow when I'm given a challenge project to work on. I love links for learning more, and tips and notes, as well. I don't really know how this all works on this site, but I'll peruse and find out later when I have time.

BTW... I'm Linda Chase from South Texas. I've sewn and stitched for many, many years, started quilting about 28 years ago. I began a few art quilt projects a few years ago and it comes and goes between which kind of project I'm doing. Right now, I have a Christmas RR in my local bee that I need to start and I'm in the middle of a lot of quilting projects that I can't seem to keep up with. I am missing getting time to embellish and that's what I want to get back to. Between being wife to a precious husband, mother to 2 grown girls and 1 9-year-old that I homeschool, and daughter/care-giver to my 84 year old mother, I stay busy. I also love to bake and garden and major on nutritionally-rich foods. That's it in a nutshell. Thanks, Sharon for starting this!
Linda

[neki rivera]

hi,
i think the "approve" button " is a good idea to avoid the dreaded s.
unless it's a chore for you.

reactivities etc: people will soon start forming sub groups of interest, so it will pretty much become "self
developed" .i just invented the concept! :)

neki desu

[Jo-Anne]

Swaps, discussion, tips, questions, reviews would be good.
May need categories to keep it neat and tidy and accessible.
Approving comments may end up a very big job for you, looking at the list of members already.

[sharonb]

Yes I am going to set the approval of members soon other than that I am going to leave comments open. So once in it is a case of being well behaved. I can block and delete members but it seems a very strict way of running things

I think we can have separate topics/discussions in the forum ie a topic for swaps, one for tips etc. The forum I imagine will be very active anyone can start a new discussion by clicking "Start a New Discussion"

To see discussions you have started or participated in you can go to the Forum tab on your network. Click the "My Discussions" link at the top of the page to see all posts you have made

I am going to write a note about this - actually I just did - but I was pointing out that
I have been poking around the help files and reading the fine print.

The the network as such is free but our quota, before we have to buy a premium service, is 10GB of storage and 100GB of bandwidth per month.

If the group is large and everyone loads lots and lots of photos we will use that up really quickly. So I am asking people to load images to share with the group but not to use the site as a photo storage place. Basically I see that if everyone is considerate about this all should be OK.

If I get told we are near our limit I will ask members to take photos down.

Other than that so far so good ...

[Susan Elliott]

I have a couple of comments...

1. I use Flickr as a very successful place to store and post photos. I don't want to have to re-post them here. I would only want to post photos here that were in direct relation to a project or a thread that is ongoing on the site. This approach would help the disk space issue. I added my flickr link under "website" since I don't have a website...

2. I think we're desperately going to need categories. I don't have the time to read through ALL the threads if it gets too large. I like the idea of swaps, challenges, book reviews, tutorials, etc as the beginning of category headings. That way, if I'm not participating or not interested, I don't need to read those categories...

My two cents worth....

[sharonb]

Anyone can start a new discussion - ie 'category' by clicking "Start a New Discussion"

To see discussions you have started or participated in you can go to the Forum tab on your network. Click the "My Discussions" link at the top of the page to see all posts you have made

Discussions, photos, and videos can all be categorised by tags. Tags are just keywords that can be applied. I think those who are already users of sites like flickr and/or have blogs will see how useful this is.

So in effect here discussions are categories - if you need a new one start it-

[Ruth Lane]

I do think you'll need to have categories or groups to keep things organized. I think that having a moderator or leader in the various groups would help to keep them on track and active. Maybe people who were specifically interested in a certain topic could volunteer to be moderator. Swaps would definitely need a "mom" to make sure that everyone follows through appropriately. A technical section is always helpful for newbies to a site so they can figure out how the site works.

[Ruth Lane]

I just went and took a look at the Fiber Arts/Mixed Media Ning site and at the top of the page there are more choices for what you can do i.e. Groups, Events, Gadgets. I imagine that is set up by the site administrator Sharon. But the Groups function would be very useful.

[sharonb]

Ok I will look into this - and see where they are!