I totally agree @Carolyn_Smith on the support and discussion elements. What I didn’t want was ride organization to happen within it as that makes them exclusive to those who publicly identify as female AND choose to be part of the forum.
I’m thinking it may be worthwhile having a closed group for women to organize rides and have discussions.
So the rides forum should be private to club members (always my belief - we don’t need the general public knowing where we are and are not) and then a thread could be started for a ride that focused on a preference for female riders.
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I agree with that. I originally put it as a place for organizing rides when discussion was to have all ride organization posted publicly. My thought was that we should have a secure place to organize rides so that the public doesn’t know that there will be a group of four or five women gathering at a certain location…But since it looks like ride organization is going private, that’s not an issue. The description in the category doesn’t have ride organization in it.
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Well, I was leaning towards keeping it secret and let the women in the club get the word out just cuz that is easier.
It is also pretty easy to publicize that it exists and ask people to communicate that they wish to join. That seems the best way to go. Now we just have to decide how best to publicize it.
To publicize it could we have something in the Announcements and FAQ that lists all the groups/categories (whatever they are called)?
e.g. FAQ: What are all the groups in the forum or why can’t I see all groups?
It sounds like there is a balancing act between making this category easy for people to be aware of and the logistics behind setting them up and monitoring them.
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We can also tweak the language in the welcome email that users get. Perhaps reusing the same language from the FAQ that Dan proposed.
I belive the Women Only group is visible for everyone under the groups page. There is a Request button which will then notify the group moderators to approve/decline membership.
https://forum.waterloocyclingclub.ca/g
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That’s excellent how it shows up on the groups page! I hadn’t found the groups page until you mentioned it though…
Certain things like the groups page are useful but not obvious. People will not know they exist.
The other big one is direct messaging to other users.
maybe put messages on the WCC Women’s Cycling Group fb page, Faction fb page, and perhaps the main WCC fb page as well?
I jut got invited to the forums so I am adding my input now:
Biking is indeed a male dominated sport and they have a very strong voice in the club and that can be very intimidating. I AM intimidated and very rarely will participate in a discussion because of that. I am not crazy about female only rides or groups but I can talk from my own experience that I used to join rides in the past only if Kari or Taryn were there.
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