Are you an admin of a facebook group?

[morningcoffee]

Can you share a bit about your experience as an admin? How much time do you spend on it? Any hints on how to make it work? TIA! 

[The Girls' Mom]

Yes.  You can spend as little or as much time on it as you want.  If you wish the group to be heavily moderated, then I suggest appointing mods.  

 

[kirstenhill]

I think that is going to vary wildly depending on the group!  I am an admin for a couple of church-related groups, and it takes virtually no time at all.  I occasionally approve new members (just look at the request and see if it makes sense -- aka someone who lives across the country is not a person who should be a member of our group that is just for church attenders). Sometimes I take five minutes to write a post about upcoming events or pin something to the top that someone else wrote about an upcoming event.

 

I have a friend who moderates a small local "barter/swap" only group (no sales -- only trade/swap/barter).  She occasionally has to delete posts that don't fit the group and remind the group of rules.

 

I'm a member of a large local "garage sale" group.  I think the admins on there spend a crazy amount of time deleting spam posts or posts for items that are forbidden on this group, trying to decide if potential members are legit or spammers, dealing with complaints, etc -- just guessing from the number of times I see the moderators posting about how they "just deleted a bunch of posts."  Or "send us your complaints about members who are "no shows" and we'll delete them from the group."

 

A discussion group might vary depending on how "heated" the topic is -- it might be really hard to moderate a group discussing politics because people would get ugly really fast...but a group on homeschooling might produce fewer heated discussion that require moderation.  Maybe.  ;-)

[Kassia]

I am admin for a small facebook group and it takes very little time.  I mostly just approve new members.  I have deleted one or two posts that were wildly inappropriate and ended up removing the member who posted them.  Otherwise, it's been very easy.  I'm sure it's a lot more time consuming for a more active group.  

 

Erica

[Faithr]

I was the admin for an active homeschooling fb group. I was really concerned that it would stay on topic and be encouraging. While most people comprehended and stayed within the purpose of the group, I was also rather shocked at the few who really felt they had a right to post whatever they wanted and be as snarky as they wanted too. I had to ban a few women who really wigged out! Goodness, there really are drama queens out there. Anyway, I do think it depends on the group. If you care about staying on topic and keeping a positive atmosphere and you want to keep spammers at bay, it can start to take up some time.

[Beebug123]

I admin a large moms groups with several others. It is a lot of work but between us it gets done. Some days I spend a lot of time (we verify profiles before people are added and it can take some time) and sometimes weeks go by before I spend any time on it. I think the hardest thing is the sheer volume of fake profiles we are spammed with.

[ThisIsTheDay]

I am an admin of a small group of about 50 people. It is set up as a "secret" group--no one can see that it exists or that anyone is a member of it.  We know each other back from the early days of homeschool email lists, and this works for us to preserve our longstanding friendships.  We are a very active group, with about 60% of the members posting/replying regularly.  Several of the members only come to FB to read this list.

 

I actually commandeered the group and took over ownership of it.  The original owner was set up as a sole owner.  As people sometimes do, she had a bit of a crisis and dumped her FB account completely. This left our group open (how "open" is relative, considering it was secret) to ANYONE taking it over. So I moved preemptively, I appointed one other person in the group as co-owner, and I posted a message to the group that I was the new admin.  This happened 2-3 years ago.

 

The only time I spend on it is reading posts like everyone else. We are a bunch of grownups who thankfully conduct ourselves as such.  I did make an admin decision to not allow anyone else to enter the group, as I felt it important that people could post private information (kids/marriage/finances/family, etc) and KNOW who the audience was and would be.  The only "admin" task I've ever done is extend an invitation to the original owner when she came back to FB and asked me to. 

 

So obviously it ranges widely on your group, your participants, and the size.  I hope it's a really good experience for you!!

 

 

[Seeking Squirrels]

I am. I don't spend much time at all for it, but that's going to vary greatly by group. Ours is for local fans of Outlander. So I mostly approve members, and read anything that gets posted to make sure it's appropriate. We don't have tight rules and we don't have a super active group, so it doesn't add up to much. When stuff is going on (new season starting, or when a new book is set to release), then I'll be trying to post *something* a couple times a week, alternating with the other two admins. Mostly links to articles and pictures of the actors.

 

I was heavily involved a while back when, through the group, we arranged a tour stop with Adhamh O'Broin. But that wasn't so much about admining the fb group, it was more an activity we did *for* the group.

[Lizzie in Ma]

Yes.  It would depend on the type of group.  I admin with 3 other people.  Really important to screen people who want to be added, there are so very many spammers out there.  I have to monitor it for bad information, click bait posts and that sort of thing as well as try to post good information.  Sometimes I need to babysit a conversation if it gets nasty or heated and warn and/or remove repeat offenders.

[Bambam]

I'm an admin on several groups all relating to homeschooling. There are multiple admins for most of the groups, while for one I'm the only admin.

 

It does take a little time on a regular basis to contact the people who have requested membership to see if it is appropriate. This varies from our local homeschool group which requires you to fill out a form and bring it to one of the admins to our homeschool garage sale group where you have to be a member of the homeschool group to join to a club FB group where you really just have to be a homeschoolers with kids of the appropriate age.

 

Rarely people will post things that are not appropriate (mostly political right now, but I think they all finally understand the rules (NO candidate endorsements!)) It seems to be more a lack of knowledge of what is allowed vs. intentional. Several of us check FB regularly, so whoever sees it first deletes it. If the admin isn't sure, we have a secret FB group for the admins of this homeschool group where we post and discuss it. 

 

So, maybe, worse case scenario, 30 minutes per week?