I've already reviewed newstudent.org and told you all how great it's been for meeting fellow students. Well inevitably MSN addresses get swapped and what ensues...
...ridiculously large group conversations.
My computer hates these as much as I do and other people were beginning to get ... Read review
Advantages: Great place for friends to chat, good controls, 3MB storage space Disadvantages: 3MB, some areas not well set out,
I've already reviewed newstudent.org and told you all how great it's been for meeting fellow students. Well inevitably MSN addresses get swapped and what ensues...
...ridiculously large group conversations.
My computer hates these as much as I do and other people were beginning to get fed up of them too, so someone decided to something about it and the result was our MSN group or community.
Now while I ... ...- and I'm fairly sure that they're not that hard at all - they're very quick and easy to join up to. You simply fill in a quick form and then wait for the manager to approve you.
Ok so here's a quick overview of what the community offers you:
**Chat**
- The main reason this community was set up for us, the chat room isn't anything out of the ordinary. The manager and assistant managers (I'm one of these) have ... more
I've already reviewed newstudent.org and told you all how great it's been for meeting fellow students. Well inevitably MSN addresses get swapped and what ensues...
...ridiculously large group conversations.
My computer hates these as much as I do and other people were beginning to get fed up of them too, so someone decided to something about it and the result was our MSN group or community.
Now while I can't comment about how easy they are to set up - and I'm fairly sure that they're not that hard at all - they're very quick and easy to join up to. You simply fill in a quick form and then wait for the manager to approve you.
Ok so here's a quick overview of what the community offers you:
**Chat** - The main reason this community was set up for us, the chat room isn't anything out of the ordinary. The manager and assistant managers (I'm one of these) have moderating powers in the chat room and can ban or boot people they think are abusing the chat service. Both manager and assistant manager have the ability to give ordinary members moderating powers in the chat room (and of course take them away) though of course assistant managers can't take away the moderating power from the manager. The manager has overall control and can overturn the decisions of assistant managers, and of course demote them to member again. There are also set controls in place - for example if someone sends too many messages in a short space of time (a very annoying thing to do) they are automatically ignored for five minutes.
**Messages** - This is kind of like a forum style thing - but not really as good. I don't think it's set out that well and the buttons and things confused me - I've tried replying to some of these messages before and struggled with it. On the main message board you can see the subject title of all messages, as well as the name of the member who started it, the date of the last reply and how many replies it's received. Both manager and assistant manager have the ability to moderate these messages and if anything is considered unnecessary then it can be deleted and again the person responsible can receive a ban - temporary or permanent. The most recently added messages are displayed on the welcome page.
**Pictures** - This is where members can upload pictures. This is a great feature which once again can easily be moderated - managers and assistant managers have the power over what photos remain on there and even what order they are in! Photos can be grouped into albums or just kept all together in the photo section. Once again the newest photos and links to the most recent photo albums are accessible from the welcome page.
**Links** - In this section links to other exciting webpages can be added - perhaps to personal webpages or MSN Spaces.
**What's New** - This is the welcome page, where the manager and assistant managers can write a welcome message, which can be edited at anytime to include more recent information. The welcome note on the New Student community contains information on the managers and how to sign up, plus any recent news. There are links to all the of the above options on the left hand side, with recent pictures on the left, recent messages underneath the welcome note and a list of the newest members at the very bottom.
I think I'm right in saying that this is pretty much the bare minimum that you get with an MSN Group - more pages can be added, documents folders, custom web pages, a calender - even a to-do list (I'm sure that must be useful to some groups..) You can choose to get e-mail notifications of what's new with the group, who has joined, who has posted new pictures, new messages that have been posted and so on. More importantly, you can choose not to. You have control over whether or not other members can e-mail you, and you can send and receive group e-mails - annoucements - to all members, regardless of their e-mail settings. This is a useful feature I find. Members you have any problems with can easy be ignored.
All in all I think the idea of having an MSN group is a great one - it's generally safer than an ordinary chat room because in most cases everyone knows each other and there are excellent controls in place. All members have to be approved by the manager, who can swiftly deal with problems. Of course there is the opportunity for some to abuse the system particularly if you're joining a group for people with shared interests and you don't know everyone on there. Our groups hopes to combat this by making it just for people who use newstudent.org and this is verified before members are accepted. Of course that doesn't guarantee that our members won't misuse the chat facilities but providing you've got a good team on moderators then this is fairly easy to keep on top of.
The New Student community consists of a management team of five - one manager and four assistant managers and for the 119 members this is easily enough considering the amount of members who use the facilities at any one given time (more moderators can quickly and easily be added as already mentioned) There's a member list which can be used by members as a search facility and by managers to change the role of a member or to ban them. Pending applications are also dealt with here, by managers or assistant managers. Joining members can write a message to explain who they are and why they want to join and this may help decide whether or not an application will be approved or denied.
As a member of an MSN group you get 3MB of storage space (I think this spans across any groups you are a member of but I don't know since I'm only a member of one). However if you need more than this you can sign up to MSN Hotmail Plus, which along with added extras for your e-mail account offers you 30MB of storage - of course this costs, according to the website this is $19.95/year.
I can't say I would be tempted to pay more since I've used hardly any of my storage space on my Group, so considering it's free it's well worth signing up to if you've got a fairly large group and you all want somewhere to chat - it's so good to finding be able to talk to everyone at the same time without having to worry about juggling a million and one MSN conversations or worse...a group conversation!
Thanks for reading and thanks to Andy for setting up our amazing MSN Group!
Advantages: Chat with friends and family share photos, messages etc Disadvantages: Can be slow at times
Back in October 2003 when the MSN chat rooms closed for good i was devasted i used chat a lot when my husband was working late it gave me something to do and i made lots of nice friends too, I never really knew any other chat services and was a member of a few MSN communities and thought it was a difficult thing to set up. I had a great idea for a community of my own so i investigated the prospect of having my own community, that is the great thing ... ...all yours and best of all its FREE. Setting up the Community was so easy infact it took me roughly 5 minutes. There are several settings for your Community you can have it private just for you and who ever you wish to join or make it public and have it on the search engine where other members can apply to join. As the person who set up the group i automatically became a manager and could appoint any other managers or assistant managers as i seen ...
happygoluckygirl 18.09.2005
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of communities.msn.co.uk
Advantages: Very good way to meet people Disadvantages: its hard to get rid of all the sad people that dont use it for its purpose
Msn communities are yet another thing from msn that helps people get together over the net(i just hope it doesnt help perverts). The communities are a custom based site that people create and anyone with an msn passport *(Profile) can join.
The Communities usually consist of a photo album, message board and a few custom pages, and a start page with what the site is about.
As the site grows more pages, messages and photo's get added and more members ... ...whole site has just had a re-vamp and looks very colourfull and works well. Unfortuantly this makes me slighty unaware of all the new features.
There is lists of all the communities on the msn site and you can join as many as you want, although some you have to be accepted into. They are in catagories like romance, teens and general etc.
All sites have a set menu down the site that comes with the community,
On this menu you have, Whats new at ...
2000andone 14.06.2001 (11.09.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of communities.msn.co.uk
Advantages: A great way of staying intouch Disadvantages: None that i can think of
Following on from my Hotmail review yesterday I thought it would be good to review another part of MSN and that is the communities.
Communities have been around for many years but it wasn't until October 2003 when MSN chat closed that they became a bit more popular. I was a member of a few Communities and didn't know how easy it was to open my own until I got chatting to an online friend. Setting up your Community is quick, easy and most of all ... ...your own website as our family decided to start our own one up so we could post photo's etc and at first we were worried that strangers would be able to see our group but on looking into it we found out that we could set it up as a private group and that only people we wanted could join. So how easy is it to set up your community well lets see first of all you will need a hotmail email address which is easy to set up. Once signed into Hotmail there ...
Shezzie1963 15.02.2006
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of communities.msn.co.uk
Advantages: Great chat facilities and people who want to talk about relevant topics (and in room hosts to make sure people who dont follow the rules will be removed!) Disadvantages: Loads and Loads and Loads and Loads.... of junk mail.
MSN communities is a new way to chat and meet people online. They consist of people who all wish to talk about the same thing. There are many different rooms from the 'Grapevine' rooms for general chat to 'Bedroom secrets' for those who are a little more sinister. I signed up to a few of them and found that I enjoyed talking to people, especially in the 'UK meet' room. The chat rooms themselves are superb, allowing for many pictures to be displayed ... ...you get booted. The hosts are also in the room and watch you so if you make anything obscene or do anything unfair etc... they can evict you immediately. A good thing as it allows those who wish to chat actually get on with doing just that.
My mistake though was signing up to the communities in each room. Although you do get the chance to choose how often you get updates and newsletters, there is no 'never' option. This means that you will recieve ...
leahslad 19.03.2001
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of communities.msn.co.uk
I am a Cardiff UNi student and the Uni is great, but i wanted to review a web site started by some fellow Cardiff uni students which is well worth checking out - http://communities.msn.co.uk/getsorted One of the best web communties on the web, GetSorted offers everything you could want on a web community. Originally set up for students, the site now caters for everyone, though still sticks to its student roots, offering help and advice. The site ... ...all your pet hates Clubbers Guide - Latest club info, club and DJ reviews, charts etc University Guide - info, help and advice Reviews - Cool web links, book reviews, CD reviews, Pub Guide Big Brother - Big Brother Review OPinion Polls - Your views and opinions I Hate you so much right now - name and shame people you dislike Competition Zone - Win top prizes every month Chat Room - meet up and chat Swap Shop - swap or sell unwanted items Message/Forum ...
martynlong22 23.09.2000
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful Review of communities.msn.co.uk
