Re: Webplatform Facebook Group

Just a couple of points, mainly in support of what others have said:

1) A technical project I volunteer for has a Facebook page, which we use to
schedule events, post interesting related info, etc.  We have never, even
once, had a spam post.  I've never had a spam post on my personal page
either (if one excludes invites to games from friends :D ).

2) The Facebook API seems usable.  I've only used the old API, though.
Have not looked at the G+ API.  But scraping posts and emitting them on the
mailing list automatically might not be good.  The type of posts that would
likely end up on Facebook are different.  You'll likely get a fair number
of short "approval" posts ("Hey, nice!") in response to info posts -- most
people who post those short responses likely would not want those going to
the mailing list.  And there will be inquiries (we hope) from new folks.
If those can be handled right on FB, that could be better -- leaves the
mailing list more for actual discussions.  What might be done instead is to
have a group of people as FB watchers, who get notifications when there is
a post, so they can respond to new folks.

3) Facebook draws a *lot* more use than G+.

4) The only problem in having both a Facebook group and a G+ group is
"siloing" -- people will stick on one and ignore or not even find the
other.  It may be better to have the G+ group just have basic info, and
direct people over to Facebook for actual discussions.

A couple of semi-related things:

5) G+ hangouts can (sometimes) be useful for conference calls.  They have
the advantage (over, say, Skype) of being free.  (Skype allows free 1-1
video calls, IIRC.)  But the hangout software is notoriously hard to
install or control.

6) Neither FB nor G+ are good for chats -- their chat UX is poor.  IRC is
much better.