Hey,
a crazy idea has been going around, that I think is worth exploring or at least discussing. Whatsapp has the option to create a community under which we could keep the already existing and new whatsapp groups connected to the club.
It’s not to replace the forum, since the whatsapp groups already exist anyway.
It could be a hub for them to be visible to all club members.
It happens with time that it is hard to keep track of whatsapp groups and their purpose.
This could give them a bit more structure that is easier to follow.
What do you think?
That’s a great idea actully. I’m in another group that uses the same format, and the community format is a good way to wrap multiple groups, with distinct purposes, e.g.
- Climbing trips
- London indoor climbing
- Social
- …
Make it a bit more organized than just a single huge whatsapp group
I think that the forum is superior to Whatsapp, whether it’s a single group or a community. Whatsapp is a total pain to use from a desktop, hard to search, hard to preserve history, not visible to people outside of the club, and feels totally ephemeral and rubbish.
The only problem with the forum is that people don’t receive notifications from here, or can’t be bothered to open it (I suppose because they open Whatsapp all the time anyway, so it is not seen as an additional burden). I think these issues should be solved instead.
Regarding the notifications, emails from the forum work well enough for me (and if I wanted them more promptly, I’d change my email settings). For those who don’t know, you can subscribe to a thread or a subforum here (we only have six, so it’s easy to subscribe to all of them if you want) and receive all the new messages as soon as they are posted.
If we continue to develop Whatsapp, we would only encourage people to post more there, which is ultimately bad for the club.
What am I missing?
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I’d agree with Daniel. Replicating everything we currently have on the forums on Whatsapp seems pointless and having two separate systems will just cause confusion and isn’t inclusive to everyone in the club
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Yes.
Plus one for Chat NLMC. It’s the future.
In fact it was only last week that a member said to me that it was the world visible activity on the forums that drove his decision to join the NLMC.
WhatsApp is a closed space with rubbish history and search. Probably a good place for car shares to sort out lifts but really bad for arranging meets and doing the business of the club.
I’m in another club (not climbing!) that uses organisational WhatsApp groups but only because their forums are poor and since they started, there’s been a steady downward trend in the quality of conversation.
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On these two last notes. I just wanted to say that a lot of activities that are between members are not shared on this forum, but within closed groups that are created on whatsapp in ad hoc way, say at a new-members meet.
The forum should serve for this, but it’s not used for it. The system is already duplicated.
Most meets between members is organized within these whatsapp groups and not visible to others. In somewhat way that’s the point, but at the same time why to be in a club…
The forum has a big minus of not being mobile friendly and not having any modern notification system.
I am not saying we duplicate the forum, but structure the already existing way in which whatsapp groups are used.
Hi Greg, how is this not mobile friendly? I was notified of your post on my phone, and am replying on my phone? Just set your notifications?
I’m not active in the club at the moment, but hoping to get back involved soon, having posts in the forum is welcoming and inclusive and what a club should be, to be honest, little groups on parallel private WhatsApp aren’t. It’s long been a case where some people join the club to meet other climbers, then effectively take their groups out of the club.
All for an update of the forum structure, but keep it in one place please.
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For what its worth I think the ChatNLMC is superior. Whatsapp is too exclusive. I have discussed this with the Eagle Ski club as they want something similar to what we have and their community’s thing is a bit out of control and unwieldy. @khalidqasrawi you can probs chip in here!?
So a big vote from me to keeping the Chat.
If it aint broke…dont fix it! 
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Interesting to see the different sentiment, which I suspect is due to this being asked on the forum, which a set of people prefer (and hence frequent more), vs on the whatsapp groups which an overlapping, but somewhat different set of people use.
I don’t see this as a decision between Whatsapp and the club forum. Whatsapp groups, like the Random meets group will continue existing and likely will be much more active than the forum, regardless of the notification system. And the forum will also continue to exist, and will be an important place to post more durable information, like meet announcements.
What we could change with a move from unmanaged private groups, to a Whatsapp community (as Greg proposed), is to make them easier to manage, discover and ultimately more inclusive.
A Whatsapp community makes it easy to invite every new joiner to the community, and they can then see what chats are available and join the relevant ones. It would effectively formalize something that already exists, but is hard to manage and impossible to discover (unless you know the right people).
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Exactly what I meant by and perceived from this thread.
Could not put it down any better way. Thank you Lada.
TL;DR all of it, but my sentiment would be keep the forums, as they are great for general chat and newcomers, but consider a WhatsApp Community with subgroups primarily for meet coordination as gives instant notifications and can be silenced for groups/meets not being attended.
A general chat subgroup in the community can also be ignored if it gets too chatty. Control of guest/non-member access to the community also needs condsideration
Using the WhatsApp community for topics and chat similar to how the forum is used, endangers the forum, which could make communication too exclusive for those preferring the forum. Typing more considered messages in whatsapp from a mobile is also a pain - where the forum is good.
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I agree with all this. The Peak meet is an excellent example of when a WhatsApp thread would be a useful addition to the chat thread. People aren’t reading the forum in time, but can easily read a quick WhatsApp requesting info.