Creating Discussions

Now that you have your group page created and you’ve invited members to join, you can begin discussing whatever interests your group. For our purposes, we’ll look at an existing group, with heavy discussion volume.

From the group main page, you can see new discussions by the members in the main areas, the topics on the right, and links to more information regarding the group in the sidebar. After following the “About this group” link, you will see the posting history all the way back to its inception.

The About page also tells the activity, description, categories for the group, and the access level.

If you wanted to follow this group, then you could use the Subscribe to this group link in the right hand sidebar. The link takes you to a page where you enter the settings for your subscription. You have three options when you subscribe.

1. No email: this means the group will show up under your account page, but you receive no emailed information.
2. Abridged Email: no more than one email a day. This would effectively send you a summary email to notify you of recent activity within the group.
3. Digest Email: this gives you an email with up to 25 postings from the day. Remember, members can post to the group and it can become heated with discussions and topics. A heated discussion may produce more than 25 messages in a short amount of time. This option gives you the ability to participate without waiting to the end of the day.

Once you choose the settings for your subscription, you’ll be asked to enter a nickname for others to see within the group. Choose a nickname you like then click the Subscribe to this group button to complete the process.

The Google menu in the upper portion of the screen will now list the group you joined. Whenever you want to navigate to the group listing, you can select the link in the upper menu to return to the group page.