FB Admin Selection/Group Rules

virtaur

We’re getting close to transitioning to a private group! According to the last poll Facebook seems like the way we’ll go for now. 

This post is for Admin/Mod volunteers & nominations and group rules! If you would like to volunteer to be an admin or mod please post below. We will have a small group so honestly mods don’t really have do much. The main role will be in the beginning when we are vetting potential members. And then after making sure the group stays active and anyone who doesn’t follow the rules is promptly removed. 

If you do not want to be an admin/mod, please nominate one or more users below. We can then have voting if necessary before we go ahead and start the group.

Rules:
I expect we’ll have the usual community guidelines, but what is important to you in a private group? 

How do we want to do the vetting process? 

Will we remove inactive members from the group after a period of time? 

Any other questions/comments/concerns?

virtaur

I volunteer to be an admin/mod. I’ve never made a BMB group before but I’m in one! 

I think it’s important for a private group to feel welcoming & inclusive. & for members to chat back and forth and get to know each other. 

It will be natural for people to get distant over time, but I would like for everyone to participate as much as they can. But nothing should be required except what we decide for vetting.

My opinion For vetting(what we did last time) : we’ll have a request thread where you can post that you want to join. An admin/mod will then message you here on the bump (unless you’re a complete stranger, then you need to participate more!). You reply with a photo of yourself/bump holding a piece of paper with the date & your bump name. Then you’ll get an invite link to the FB group. Once in, you make an intro post with whatever you’d like to share. The group will be private and anyone in the group will only see what you choose to share. My group ended up friend requesting each other eventually when the babies were older! I’d like to keep the group open to requests for a while to catch anyone who is finding the bump late. But they have to participate here to be considered for the FB group. 

I think we should only remove members who don’t ever participate or interact from the get go. It’s no fun to have a bunch of lurkers that don’t contribute 🤷🏻‍♀️

I'm excited to get to know everyone more! 

stress_engine

Consider my likes as endorsement if you are nominating yourself or others! 

@virtaur, that all sounds pretty reasonable to me. What do you consider active?  Because I know there will probably be weeks where all of us will be more busy from time to time. Also not sure what the notification settings on fb groups look like these days, but I sometimes miss stuff and on fb and it finally notifies much later.

I don't want to sound mean, but I think the most annoying thing on the bump groups  has been the random urgent posts. Where someone who has never been on much/at all comes in with often panicked specific situational concerns/questions/diagnosis that they could have just googled or asked their doctor about. I get that it's a space for sharing experiences, but it's sometimes simple stuff that has been talked about on other threads. And often when helpful advice is offered, they sometimes never even comment back again on their own thread. Vetting should mean you can't just come in whenever you're suddenly panicking and then never participate again. It's kind of stressful on our end to see that frantic activity and have to answer/support without receiving any support back.

HGRich

I’m also down to be a mod. I’m on Facebook daily, and I check in on my other BMBs while I’m on there. The oldest one, everyone knows each other well, but we post only weekly so it’s not time consuming. My second one is still posting daily. 

I think if there’s anyone who’d like to join the fb group who’s brand new to this BMB on the bump I would want them to give us a couple of weeks of posting in the weekly check in here, which we could keep posting, and tell us about themselves a little. 

But otherwise anyone whose username we recognize I’m fine with allowing in. And I think if we make it clear that zero posting or responding in the first few months would get you kicked out, that’s fine. But I will say that people who post a lot initially and then as babies get older, if they’re just super busy with life but want to stay in the group to check in once every few months, I’m fine with that too. I even had to take a few months’ break in my A19 group around 4mo postpartum because of trauma I was going through, and I was welcomed back later and I appreciated it. 

I think I’d like to decide in advance what kind of posts we post weekly. Like, my A17 group posts one randoms post and we use it until it reaches 1k comments, and then we start another. But my A19 group posts a new randoms each day. And my A17 only posts five things Friday, which we use as a sort of catch up on each others lives thing. But A19 does a special Wednesday HDBD but babies photos instead. Things like that. 

Early on when all babies are born I think it can be helpful to have a randoms thread, a photo thread, and a questions/help me out thread, to keep things organized rather than everyone posting their own thing and making it hard to find posts. 

But before babies are born we could keep up with a HDBD, a randoms, and a weekly check in for anyone who’s still got a baby inside. 

kamikazezoomy

As a first time mom, I don’t have any experience with this, but I haven’t read any suggestions here that seem outrageous to me. And @virtaur and @hgrich both feel like de facto leaders around here, and i think would both do well as mods/admins for a fb group 

virtaur

@stress_engine I completely agree with what you said about the bump! That’s what I like about moving because it feels more like a lil village where we can actually be invested in each other’s lives. 

I personally would define being active as popping in occasionally, or even just liking/commenting on other’s posts when you can if you don’t want to post an update. Nothing specific but for example there are people in my current group that haven’t posted in over a year. They haven’t been removed just because the group has been going for 4 years. But I feel like if someone is like that from the beginning, they probably won’t become more active. But that’s also up to everyone. We don’t have to have any rules about being active once we’re on FB! I think the only person we removed was someone who barely posted on the bump and got accepted anyway. They had a really locked down profile and didn’t even post an intro. So it was bizarre that they even wanted to join since they never participated. I’m assuming they were just a lurker. Anyway. I hope that makes some sense! I just think it’s more fun when we all share what’s going on occasionally, but of course everyone is going to be super busy!

virtaur

@hgrich I completely agree 100%!! My group just switched to monthly check ins as our kids are around 3.5 and there’s only about 14 active members currently. But in the beginning I think we just did weeklies? We didn’t really do many other threads unless they were related to holidays/birthday ideas. But I’m totally cool with whatever majority wants! 

& I’ve definitely taken mental health breaks as well. It esp feels nice when others notice you’re gone & check in on you! 

virtaur

@kamikazezoomy thank you for the support!! I’ve always loved being in a leadership position and helping others. But I also love working as a team and getting input from everyone. Plus I’m on my phone too much and definitely crave adult camaraderie lol 🤣  I am honored to be considered! 

louloumama

I’m good with what has been outlined here! I might say that people can participate without necessarily posting (I’m often not a big poster on social media but like to weigh in on some topics).  Anyhoo, I’m ready for the switch whenever!

virtaur

@louloumama 100%! There’s definitely going to be people who post every day vs once in a while. And it becomes a different world once the babies get here. Hopefully some more people will weigh in here so we can get a group formed soon! 

denise_amd

I like the idea of  organized threads so it's easy to chime in! I lurk more on FB but I enjoy keeping up on a weekly/monthly basis!

bserena

I think both @virtaur and @hgrich would be great mods/admins! I admin my N20 group but was way more active on TB with that one lol. But FB is definitely easier for me now.

My N20 is still pretty active considering our kiddos are 3.5, we do weekly randoms, HDBD (pics of kiddos) and occasional other random posts. In the beginning we did daily randoms since there are over 40 of us and it was super active, but then went to weekly once it slowed down.

I think since we are small, weekly randoms/check-ins and HDBD might be good. One thing we did in N20 that I loved is everyone who was comfortable did a standalone post for their birth announcement/story/photos too. Those are fun to look back on later as well.