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Shirleyr

Shirleyr

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Shirley
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I have a Facebook group, its 45 members just about right for birding where I live and sometimes people ask to join. Yesterday a man ask to join and I popped over to his profile to see why he wanted to join and discovered that he had no friends, no photos, no interests but he was a member of over 200 groups. I am a member of three and that's enough. So I refused his request, I want someone who will post and has an interest in what the group is about.
Can anyone put a light on this as why a person would want join over 200 and it appears not to be interested in any.
 
I too run a page on facebook and i always check the individuals page.
If they have recently set up FB, live way outside the area that the group is based on, or are a member of loads of groups they get declined.

Dont worry!
 
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I too have a little group on facebook and I stated UK members only. Someone tried to join from India and I denied them, stating it was for the UK only. Anyway, he tried joining again, after he had changed his location to the UK. I simply denied him again.
 
Dave70D said:
On our one we get a lot of folk from India wanting to just join the Photo Manipulation group, funny some times as they don`t wont to join in on the normal photo sharing :confused:
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I think there is an option to pick what countries are able to view your groups, in the settings section. Or maybe it is just facebook pages, I will have to have a look at some point.
 
I co-run a group (non-photography) and we check everyone that requests to join (anything between 5 and 30 per week). We reject/block a significant percentage for a variety of reasons. Being in too many groups is one of our warning flags, in our experience it usually indicates either a spammer or serial-seller. No friends is unusual though. Even the spambots usually have a bunch of other spambot accounts as friends.

My guess is that gatekeeping the joiners saves us 80% of the admin time we hear reported by the owners of other groups in our community. We might reject a small number of genuine enquiries, but we've only had 2 or 3 spambot accounts get through in 18 months.
 
I've never been an admin before but now I'm off to check the members that have joined, some have been added by other members.
 
I'm co-admin on a few groups and run one along with my wife.

All those who request membership to any of these groups get their Facey profiles checked. We look out for the above mentioned things and also things specific to our groups. And if we can find no obvious links then we decline membership. Also, if there is nothing to see because of their privacy settings then we err on the side of caution, wondering what they have to hide. An exception to this might be if they have 'friends' in the group.

By way of an example, I am on the management committee of our local children's footy league and the various groups I co-admin or run are linked to this. Obviously photos of kids is a highly sensitive area. So we would generally expect to look on profiles and find local people showing pics of their footy kids, general footy related stuff, pics of their latest visit to their favourite team's stadium, family pics where one of the kids is in a footy kit etc. It's often worth prying a bit further because an out of area person may well be a grandparent, or aunt or whatever.

You get a 'nose' for who to let in and who to decline after a while. and the occasional few who get through can soon be deleted and barred.

In answer to your question, there will be sellers, purveyors of porn, weirdos, billy-no-mates and people with a genuine interest in your particular subject, all seeking to join.

Go with your gut feeling in all cases.
 
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robp said:
Also, if there is nothing to see because of their privacy settings then we err on the side of caution, wondering what they have to hide.
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wut?

just because someone does not want the world and his dog seeing their details and photos does NOT mean they have something to hide.

what an absurd suggestion. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.
 
robp said:
I'm co-admin on a few groups and run one along with my wife.

All those who request membership to any of these groups get their Facey profiles checked. We look out for the above mentioned things and also things specific to our groups. And if we can find no obvious links then we decline membership. Also, if there is nothing to see because of their privacy settings then we err on the side of caution, wondering what they have to hide. An exception to this might be if they have 'friends' in the group.

By way of an example, I am on the management committee of our local children's footy league and the various groups I co-admin or run are linked to this. Obviously photos of kids is a highly sensitive area. So we would generally expect to look on profiles and find local people showing pics of their footy kids, general footy related stuff, pics of their latest visit to their favourite team's stadium, family pics where one of the kids is in a footy kit etc. It's often worth prying a bit further because an out of area person may well be a grandparent, or aunt or whatever.

You get a 'nose' for who to let in and who to decline after a while. and the occasional few who get through can soon be deleted and barred.

In answer to your question, there will be sellers, purveyors of porn, weirdos, billy-no-mates and people with a genuine interest in your particular subject, all seeking to join.

Go with your gut feeling in all cases.
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I did get a 'Nose', feeling and I was right. Good tips in your post. Thanks(y)
 
And for everyone's amusement, when the league set up its Facey group, none of us were too social media savvy and one day I approved a membership request from a lady with a Russian name. I later got a panicky message from a colleague, directing me to check her profile. Let's just say there were bare boobs in abundance!!!!! Albeit body painted in the flags of World Cup nations.
 
robp said:
I'm co-admin on a few groups and run one along with my wife.

All those who request membership to any of these groups get their Facey profiles checked. We look out for the above mentioned things and also things specific to our groups. And if we can find no obvious links then we decline membership. Also, if there is nothing to see because of their privacy settings then we err on the side of caution, wondering what they have to hide. An exception to this might be if they have 'friends' in the group.

By way of an example, I am on the management committee of our local children's footy league and the various groups I co-admin or run are linked to this. Obviously photos of kids is a highly sensitive area. So we would generally expect to look on profiles and find local people showing pics of their footy kids, general footy related stuff, pics of their latest visit to their favourite team's stadium, family pics where one of the kids is in a footy kit etc. It's often worth prying a bit further because an out of area person may well be a grandparent, or aunt or whatever.

You get a 'nose' for who to let in and who to decline after a while. and the occasional few who get through can soon be deleted and barred.

In answer to your question, there will be sellers, purveyors of porn, weirdos, billy-no-mates and people with a genuine interest in your particular subject, all seeking to join.

Go with your gut feeling in all cases.
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Going with the Gut feeling is just what my Mods and I do, and thanks for the tips too (y)
 
neil_g said:
wut?

just because someone does not want the world and his dog seeing their details and photos does NOT mean they have something to hide.

what an absurd suggestion. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.
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As the full text of my message suggested, we have photos of children, which, like it or not, can be contentious. So we responsibly err on the side of caution. I have no doubt that many who have Facey profiles and don't let people see them have very good, completely innocent
reasons for not doing so.
 
robp said:
And for everyone's amusement, when the league set up its Facey group, none of us were too social media savvy and one day I approved a membership request from a lady with a Russian name. I later got a panicky message from a colleague, directing me to check her profile. Let's just say there were bare boobs in abundance!!!!! Albeit body painted in the flags of World Cup nations.
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Did you ban her or .........:D perhaps she was looking for an English husband or not:coat:
 
Shirleyr said:
Did you ban her or .........:D perhaps she was looking for an English husband or not:coat:
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LOL, Given the amount of flag painted boobs on show, she was probably looking for an international array husbands for all the young ladies in her village!
 
robp said:
As the full text of my message suggested, we have photos of children, which, like it or not, can be contentious. So we responsibly err on the side of caution. I have no doubt that many who have Facey profiles and don't let people see them have very good, completely innocent
reasons for not doing so.
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funny as their profiles will most likely be private for the same reason.
 
neil_g said:
wut?

just because someone does not want the world and his dog seeing their details and photos does NOT mean they have something to hide.

what an absurd suggestion. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.
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Really, really sorry. In addition to my above comments and having reread my opening post, I can see why you have taken offence. Poorly worded by me, that's all. Wasn't implying anything. Simply stating the care we have to take when we have so many pics of kids on our groups.
 
neil_g said:
funny as their profiles will most likely be private for the same reason.
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Sorry, we don't regard it as 'funny.'

Edit: In addition you may, or may not, be surprised by the number of folk who have a major flip out over a pic of their son/daughter appearing on Facebook, but then plaster pics of said offspring all over their own fully public Facey profile. I had a recent case where a parent wanted photos I took of his son playing for one of our teams removed from our group, but had already copied my photos on to his public profile!!
 
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neil_g said:
what an absurd suggestion. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.
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You've never tried running a FB group have you?

Honestly, it's anything for the easy life. If you can keep trouble out of the group everything else becomes plain sailing - 10 minutes vetting can save an hour of tidying up the damage to discussions. But I guess the groups I help manage are easier than Rob's in one respect - we gain almost all of our members from one of three feeder groups and can cross-check membership lists even when profiles are set to private. Members coming directly to us generally have a public link to the topic.
 
does any one know a good way to gain members for a facebook group. I'm trying to start a collective where people can share their work and collaborate etc?
 
see.lea said:
does any one know a good way to gain members for a facebook group. I'm trying to start a collective where people can share their work and collaborate etc?
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Yes. But it's more than just numbers, it's getting the right members - those that are interested and participate. That means understanding your groups purpose, understanding what would make someone a "good" member for the group, etc. If you flood a group with members too quickly you can very quickly kill any seed of community cohesion. Slow growth keeps things on-topic, and requires fewer nudges from admin to keep things on track.
 
I've recently started a Facebook group and have 50 members who are interested in what the group is about. I refused a couple as they didn't have any profile, photos, their homepage was a blank and that spells trouble. Some members don't post but most do look. I started with a few family members and friends, then you can tag the title and posts, then there is a discription of what's the group is about and that can also be tagged. As time goes by and the posts come in, word spreads and then the membership will increase. Its fun but you have the key to take out unwelcome posts but take it easy on that. Good luck.
 
neil_g said:
wut?

just because someone does not want the world and his dog seeing their details and photos does NOT mean they have something to hide.

what an absurd suggestion. whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty.
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....If someone isn't comfortable sharing enough information on their page so that an Admin of a group can assess their suitablity as a member, then they can't expect to be accepted in the group.

I admin two Fb groups and invariably refuse those who are paranoic about their so called 'privacy'.

If someone is a member of lots and lots of groups it only means that they have lots and lots of interests and/or aren't very good at tidyng up the groups they no longer participate in.

My dragonflies group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/561222590593478/

My birds of prey group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/1130101500411474/
 
I'm a founding admin of two groups. One's photography-based, quite small and invite-only to keep it on-focus. All members are known to the group before they join, or come on personal recommendation from an existing member.

The other is set to Private but searchable, we promote through targeted groups and word-of-mouth and in the last 18 months has grown from a standing start to 1700+ members. It's very on-topic and requires remarkably little admin/moderation for a group if this size (there are just three Admins). Mostly because we operate a door policy. The door policy we have is quite simple..
  • Set the group so all new members require Admin approval.
  • Check the profile of everyone that wants to join.
  • Reject and Block the obvious spambots - you get a feel for these, they are very obvious once you know what to look for in the type of spambot that's attracted to your type of group. If you can spot a clickbait link, you can spot a spambot. In the community our group is aimed at 95% of clickbait links are to the same three clickbait websites.
  • Accept those who are members of other relevant groups (as already mentioned over 90% come from one of three "feeder" FB groups in the same community). Sometimes this can make things easy, if I've made a post promoting the group in another group and I can see the same person both like/comment on the post I've made and then see their name come up for Admin approval to join then I know they're a relevant person to the group.
  • Accept those with relevant Likes (quite straightforward to identify as we've a narrow and defined group interest).
  • For those leftover (including those with fully private profiles), send a private message politely asking their interest in the group. Reject those that don't respond within 2-3 days. Review the "sorry, not the group I was looking for" responses, we've found our SEO within Facebook was too high for a couple of misleading keywords and are in the process of making adjustments to the group name and description to reduce this.
I very strongly recommend having a strict door policy from the start if you run a Facebook group, and getting in quick with gentle nudges to keep things on-track when discussions drift. The second FB group I run is actually two groups, the main group with 1700+ members is very much on-topic and there's a sister group (open to members of the main group) for banter/off-topic stuff. We get very good feedback from our members about how we run it, principally for it's friendliness and focus on the topic. Another similar group I;m a member of runs on Admin approval for every new discussion post, and they still have more spam and more irrelevant discussions than we do.


"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't come into it. There's no universal right to join a Facebook group, and nothing in our door policy is determined based upon a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act.
 
Shirleyr said:
I've recently started a Facebook group and have 50 members who are interested in what the group is about. I refused a couple as they didn't have any profile, photos, their homepage was a blank and that spells trouble. Some members don't post but most do look. I started with a few family members and friends, then you can tag the title and posts, then there is a discription of what's the group is about and that can also be tagged. As time goes by and the posts come in, word spreads and then the membership will increase. Its fun but you have the key to take out unwelcome posts but take it easy on that. Good luck.
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Think I have just over 100 members on my group.
 
Alastair said:
The door policy we have is quite simple..
  • Set the group so all new members require Admin approval.
  • Check the profile of everyone that wants to join.
  • Reject and Block the obvious spambots - you get a feel for these, they are very obvious once you know what to look for in the type of spambot that's attracted to your type of group. If you can spot a clickbait link, you can spot a spambot. In the community our group is aimed at 95% of clickbait links are to the same three clickbait websites.
  • Accept those who are members of other relevant groups (as already mentioned over 90% come from one of three "feeder" FB groups in the same community). Sometimes this can make things easy, if I've made a post promoting the group in another group and I can see the same person both like/comment on the post I've made and then see their name come up for Admin approval to join then I know they're a relevant person to the group.
  • Accept those with relevant Likes (quite straightforward to identify as we've a narrow and defined group interest).
  • For those leftover (including those with fully private profiles), send a private message politely asking their interest in the group. Reject those that don't respond within 2-3 days. Review the "sorry, not the group I was looking for" responses, we've found our SEO within Facebook was too high for a couple of misleading keywords and are in the process of making adjustments to the group name and description to reduce this.
"Innocent until proven guilty" doesn't come into it. There's no universal right to join a Facebook group, and nothing in our door policy is determined based upon a protected characteristic within the meaning of the Equality Act.
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....As the sole founding Admin (with several Moderators in support) on my groups, I apply the same 'door policy' as you do. It's worth examining prospective member's profiles and behaviours elsewhere. Some still slip through occasionally though, or more commonly think that a group on Facebook belongs to everyone as if a Communist utopia and that consequently they don't have to comply with the simple rules which are in fact designed for everyone's benefit.
 
RedRobin said:
Some still slip through occasionally though, or more commonly think that a group on Facebook belongs to everyone as if a Communist utopia and that consequently they don't have to comply with the simple rules which are in fact designed for everyone's benefit.
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Generally, in my experience, those people are the least likely to identify as communist.. far more likely to identify as white, male, middle-aged and right wing..
 
As an Admin on my local photography group I had a similar request to join Fro m Colorado.. A female recently joined Facebook. Nothing on her page so clicked Ignore..... .
 
artdemole said:
As an Admin on my local photography group I had a similar request to join Fro m Colorado.. A female recently joined Facebook. Nothing on her page so clicked Ignore..... .
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That can be quite innocent.. I can guarantee that if your set up a local group for Norfolk you'd get folk from Virginia wanting to join.
 
Alastair said:
Generally, in my experience, those people are the least likely to identify as communist.. far more likely to identify as white, male, middle-aged and right wing..
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....LOL. I am white, male, middle-aged and an Oily Tory.

To clarify, when I referred to a communist utopia I meant that some folk don't respect that ALL groups on Facebook are under the authority of whoever founded or administers the group page. I meant it in a utopian 'power-to-the-people' sense.

Whether a Facebook group's settings allow public viewing or not, they are nonetheless like private clubs with house rules and policies and they have etiquettes which should be respected. Otherwise, either don't join or prepare to be booted out.

It's the same here on Talk Photography - We respect the rules if we want to stay a member.
 
I'm informed that the people who do this sort of thing do so for the list of contacts in the group, to harvest the email addresses and sell them on
 
nass said:
I'm informed that the people who do this sort of thing do so for the list of contacts in the group, to harvest the email addresses and sell them on
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....I need to make sure that I have not misunderstood your words. Are you saying that those people who start special interest groups on Facebook (I have created and Admin two wildlife subject groups) do so to harvest the email addresses of group members to sell them on?

Firstly, a Facebook group Admin, or indeed any group member, has no access whatsoever to the email addresses of any other members. Therefore it would be impossible to even inform a third-party regardless of financial gain.

Would you care to explain please, Johan?
 
RedRobin said:
....I need to make sure that I have not misunderstood your words. Are you saying that those people who start special interest groups on Facebook (I have created and Admin two wildlife subject groups) do so to harvest the email addresses of group members to sell them on?

Firstly, a Facebook group Admin, or indeed any group member, has no access whatsoever to the email addresses of any other members. Therefore it would be impossible to even inform a third-party regardless of financial gain.

Would you care to explain please, Johan?
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I think he may mean those who join lots of groups but, either way, I don't believe the aforementioned email addresses are accessible in any case.
 
nass said:
I'm informed that the people who do this sort of thing do so for the list of contacts in the group, to harvest the email addresses and sell them on
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Facebook Group creators can't see members email addresses. Creators of groups using traditional group creating software such as PHPBB, SMF forums, and many others, can view members email addresses.
 
RedRobin said:
....I need to make sure that I have not misunderstood your words. Are you saying that those people who start special interest groups on Facebook (I have created and Admin two wildlife subject groups) do so to harvest the email addresses of group members to sell them on?

Firstly, a Facebook group Admin, or indeed any group member, has no access whatsoever to the email addresses of any other members. Therefore it would be impossible to even inform a third-party regardless of financial gain.

Would you care to explain please, Johan?
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Sure, as in people who apparently join a bazillion groups, have millions of friends, but have no posts available themselves on their profiles. Nothing to do with someone like yourself, which would appear perfectly laudable. And, as I said, "reliably informed" - hardly something I'm any sort of expert myself but I had that question too so asked someone who seemed to know better than me.
 
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nass said:
Sure, as in people who apparently join a bazillion groups, have millions of friends, but have no posts available themselves on their profiles. Nothing to do with someone like yourself, which would appear perfectly laudable. And, as I said, "reliably informed" - hardly something I'm any sort of expert myself but I had that question too so asked someone who seemed to know better than me.
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You've been unreliably informed. Neither Admin nor Members of Facebook groups have access to the email addresses of others.
 
I tend to find if people have very heavilly locked down profiles then they will get declined from me for sure.
At the very least a nice profile pic abit of biog text and maybe a few public pics.
 
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