There are groups for individual departments and organizations that are for members only. Members can make it invitation only, they can make it totally private, they can make it totally open....its their call. Just like Groups worked on LinkedIn, MySpace, Facebook, etc. It just is how it is ... and isn't likely to change. I manage a group for my own department...we won't want any lurkers in there. LOL.
Just like the Chiefs Group..its for Chiefs. Having a bunch of Juniors join wouldn't make a lot of sense. That is also why there are public forums here where anyone can participate, and group discussions for more highly targeted topics.
Groups serve a great purpose especially for departments because they can have an internal department message board, message each other via group messaging, post items of interest, etc ... things the 'general membership' of FFN doesn't need to be privy to.
I do not see a problem with having a set of standards for joining a group. I am not a paint baller so why go and join their goup. My point with that example is if they let people in that group to ramble alot on nonsense when they have no clue what they are talking about.
So why not limit the people who come in so you do not have to deal with it.
I think having private groups is a great feature. Like Ben said, there are a lot of "wannabes" who are not in the fire service that just don't need to be in all the groups. I started a group for my fire department. We talk about stuff within our department, and can also learn from everyone else. If we wanted to discuss a recent ems call we had we wouldn't want the whole FF Nation reading about it. "What happens in the department stays in the department".... having a private group allows us to discuss our private fire department stuff. I think that represents FF Nation very well. You have the the Brotherhood as a whole, but also hundreds of individual departments.
If I remember correctly, the social side was also the reason why some topics with no baring on the fire service are allowed to stay on the forum. Some on the professional side decide to group together without the imflux of people with no reason to be in the discussion. Where is the trouble here?
With alot of departments around here they have officer meetings. These meeting are not open to the public fire department. We discuss alot of stuff in there that the general staff doesnt need to know right then. Same with the groups, they make them private for so many reasons. The chiefs are all chiefs and dont want just some rookie giving their two cents on certain issues. This may sound bad but with some groups this does make sense. You have to apply to get on the fire department didnt you? This is the same thing with some of the groups.
You have to apply to get on the fire department didnt you? This is the same thing with some of the groups.
This is a reply I did yesterday about this part of your response Mike:
I'd actually say it's a very, very big difference.
One is purely social (FFN) the other is a combination of social, high pressure, team reliant, highly sensitive (Emotionally and from a security perspective) situations.
It's the same as in a real world social situation. You're going to have cliques here and there. People naturally divide into groups of like minded people. I'm not really for or against "inviation only" groups at this time, let's see where this goes.
I have to disagree. Several of the "members only" FFN groups are not simply social...they involve the exchange of technical, strategic, and tactical information, problem-solving, and resource networking. I guarantee that the Fire Chief's & Chief Officer group members are vetted prior to being accepted.