The goal of yunity is to create a mapping platform which will enable the services already offered on a lot of facebook sharing groups to function with a better software, making it much more practical for its users. Of course, we encourage the development of any of these unconditional sharing groups that we do not see as competition, rather than as a common effort for a similar change with different tools, and hopefully the communities that have built on these groups will happily welcome a shift to using a new, well-designed and very functional platform - aka yunity!
...
It would be best to first check if there already is a sharing group your for city. In Germany and Austria they are either called “Share & Care”, “Free Your Stuff” or “Verschenk’s” + the name of the city. If this is the case, experience shows that it is hard for a new group to attract a sufficient amount of members. Instead, consider becoming an administrator in one of the already existing groups. Usually the team is happy to get some help and at the same time you can introduce them to yunity.
Creating your group
If there is no group in your city and you want to start a new one: Nothing easier than that! Go to your Facebook starting page, click on “Groups” in the navigation bar on the left and then on “Create Group”.
...
Group Type: Support
Web and Email Address: Customize address to your liking
Administration
Basically, the admin job consists of the following tasks:
...
Depending on the size of your group, we recommend different settings and approaches:
Phase #1 – Recruiting members (0 – 999 members)
Privacy: Public group
Membership approval: Any member can add or approve members.
...
In the beginning, it is particularly important to get people to join the group. The group starts to really work from about 500-1000 members onwards. To achieve that, you could for example post your sharing group's link with a short introductory text in other groups. If you already have some things you can share yourself, you will probably get people’s attention. In this phase, you can let everyone add members. Later on (at the latest when the first fake profiles appear), you should change the settings so that only admins can approve new members. Also, at this stage, “punishments” for rule violations can be managed quite loosely and you don’t have to react on every infringement of the group’s rules.
Phase #2 – Controlling growth (1.000 – 4.999)
Privacy: Closed group
Membership approval: Any member can add members, but an admin must approve them.
...
From now on, you should definitely start documenting rule violations. This helps a lot with legitimizing your measures and identifying repeat offenders. This is best done by using a GoogleDoc so your fellow admins can keep up-to-date as well. A template for this can be found here. For this size of group, a team of 3-4 admins is perfect.
Phase #3 – Managing the crowd (5.000 - ∞)
Privacy: Closed group
Membership approval: Any member can add members, but an admin must approve them.
...
In addition, you should now think about outsourcing questions regarding information into an own group. This prevents the active sharing from being pushed to the background.
How to deal with rule violations?
Be friendly but firm when it comes to the “unconditional” part of the sharing. Certainly, you don’t want to upset your members, but posts that go against the rules always have an effect on other people's perception of the group as well and should be deleted as quickly as possible. Here’s how to best go about this:
...
Don’t feed the trolls! Occasionally, there might be members who purposely provoke irrational arguments. Do not engage them in conversation but simply expel them from the group.
Internal rules for special cases
This is an example of how Share & Care Bamberg decided to settle its internal rules. Your admin board should decide together on which posts they would consider positive, tolerable or simply unacceptable.
Allowed | Tolerated | Prohibited |
Looking for witnesses | Looking for members for fee-based activities (e.g. in clubs and associations) | Reporting crimes (Gipsies, Jehovahs Witnesses, beware of the bad foreigners,…) |
Surveys from local researchers/students | Petitions | Sales via private message (pm) |
Gift coupon codes | Addendum: “Please offer anything” only to be tolerated in individual cases | Raffles, lottery tickets, trial lessons and other kinds of alleged giving |
Requesting things for other people | Giving away small animals (hamsters, fish, etc.) | Giving away animals |
Dating ads |
| Fee-based events (e.g. concerts, sporting games) |
Lost and Found |
| Finder’s reward |
Giving away items that don't belong to you (found in the street, shared with the address) |
|
|
| Posts like: “Where can I get this or that cheap?” |
...