GIRS FB group is now open

Code:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/GreaterIowaReefSociety/

Just forcing the URL to show (otherwise it auto-resolves)

 

Regarding this, the forum is not going to go away. There are people who are not on Facebook, some who are pretty much only on Facebook, and plenty who are on both.

There are many functions that the forum and website can continue to serve, and there are many plans in the works for improvements, such as a feedback system (already purchased, just need to configure) as well as more ways to find other hobbyists (Members Map), LFS maps, a Q&A / Wiki for all levels of hobbyists...These are just a few of the things that I've been looking at. Plus, the next version of the forum software was just officially released (but that's a few months down the road, minimum)

Also, we are keeping livestock sales off the FB group and keeping that on the forum (for several reasons).

There is also a pretty good chance that we will be changing the term "GIRS Member" to something else, because "member" is the term used for anyone who joins a Facebook group, so that's going to just confuse everyone (at least, those new to the club). It's already a term used by most forum software to define the same thing (a "registered member") so that's been on the block for a while IMO.

We have a lot of things in the works for 2018!

 

instead of member? Not following...or not recognizing sarcasm possibly lol

 

@Actuary we're continuing the internal discussion about this and we'll have a decision on this soon.

 

We're going to go ahead and allow buy/sell/trade on the Facebook Group. Please bear in mind that this currently only applies to the main GIRS Facebook Group:

Greater Iowa Reef Society

The updated rules will be:

1) GIRS Sponsors may post, but we ask that you be reasonable with your posting frequency - creating new posts once or twice a week, no problem. We just don't want it to get to the point where people start complaining.

2) Hobbyists can post any hobby-related items. Since we currently have no way to tie "GIRS Member" to a Facebook profile, this applies to any FB Group Member (same as here on the forum, you only have to register to post).

We hope that people will come to the GIRS community and be part of both our Facebook Group and the Forum, and post in both! We also hope that people will see the value in becoming members of GIRS, and we continue to look for ways to make it worthwhile to be a GIRS Member.

Regarding the Regional Facebook Groups: These aren't really "official GIRS groups" per se, generally these are ran by GIRS Leadership Team members (trustees, etc), but they weren't expressly started by the club. Posting rules in these groups is administrated as they see fit. We are asking that you centralize all Facebook Group posting that is buy/sell/trade related to the main group. This applies to sponsors as well. We (GIRS) may occasionally push/promote sponsor posts to the regional groups, but that's it at this point.

Here are the regional groups:
Burlington, Iowa & Surrounding Areas Regional Saltwater & Reef Group
Greater Iowa Reef Society (QC Region)
Greater Iowa Reef Society (Iowa City/Cedar Rapids) Region
Waterloo Cedar Falls region Greater Iowa Reef Society

 

An additional note: Facebook has automated "bots" that look for posts of people selling live animals. Post at your own risk, if Facebook removes your post and/or limits your Facebook account, that's out of our control - we're not going to remove live animal/coral selling FB posts just because they are live animals

 

Agreed! You're not the only one. I definitely don't want to see the forum go away