I haven’t been using FB as frequently anymore, but today, entirely by accident, I noticed that over the past few weeks, I have been receiving notifications for new members in the Julia Programming Language group. At some point in 2022, someone invited me to become a moderator/admin of the group. Back then, I thought I could simply help the community by approving requests and possibly responding to newcomers. However, I’ve only rarely been able to review requests for new posts. Today, I checked to see who else had been administering the group over the past year and, unfortunately, discovered that I was the only one doing so. As a result, today I approved hundreds of requests from new members to join the group and also a dozen new posts (which may now be outdated in terms of what people are asking). These posts include real beginners’ Julia coding questions, announcements of new Julia seminars/webinars, etc. I will inform the group that the community is mostly active on this discourse, but I think it would be beneficial if people here occasionally spent a minute or two checking for new posts, responding to questions, and possibly redirecting them to Julia Discourse. Here is the link to the group’s page.
The Julia representation on FB is a bit chaotic and not official. That’s probably how FB works and perhaps a reason why I try to avoid it.
For your group there are 3 other admins/moderators as it seems. Isn’t it better do close or archive this group if nobody of 4 people aren’t able to moderate it regularly anymore (if possible)?
In general and in my opinion: my feeling is that there are already too many official Julia social communities around. For me it’s only discourse, as there is no time left for Slack, Zulip, Discord, SO and Forem (more? probably!).
I share your view on fb; it can indeed be a bit chaotic. Regarding the Julia group, it’s noteworthy that it is the second-largest with nearly 4000 members and continues to grow, despite our limited moderation efforts until now. This group is not as specialized as the ‘Julia Language for Scientific Programming’ group, attracting a broad range of Julia beginners. The increasing membership suggests that many people still turn to this group, possibly as their initial point of contact with the Julia community. Moving forward, I plan to be a bit more active in moderating the group and would greatly appreciate any assistance you can offer, even if it’s just a few minutes to answer questions when you can.