There are two privacy settings for Gather Groups that are important:
1) Group Visibility - This setting can make the entire group invisible to everyone, except current group members. If set to 'private', the group will not appear in any group listing (including 'My Groups', under the 'My Gather' page), tag pages, or search results using the 'Find Groups' option. This does NOT affect content in the group.
2) Content Visibility - This setting controls whether group content (articles and images) can be viewed outside of the group. This will also affect comments made on that content. If this setting is set to 'everyone', then all content published to the group will appear outside of the group, in all listings, and everywhere on Gather that identifies when new content is published. This will include notification to your connections, within the 'Articles For Me', or 'Images For Me' section of their 'My Gather' page.
Therefore:
a) Gather Group owners desiring a private group, should ensure the settings above are in accordance with their requirements, and identify these privacy settings within the description for the group.
b) Gather Group members should verify group and content privacy settings before publishing to any group they believe is private. Unfortunately, these settings can only be viewed by the Gather Group owner, or manager. Therefore, if the group owner has not identified these settings within the group description, you will need to contact the group owner to obtain this information.
Additionally, all articles or images published to a private group should be published exclusively to that group, to ensure the privacy of the content. For example, publishing an article to a private group and also to a second, public group, may make your content public, depending upon your selections when publishing.
The access selections you make upon the second publishing page, will affect how, and by whom, your content may be viewed.
1) Selecting 'Everyone' will make your article available to all Gather members, if you are publishing your content to a combination of both private and public groups.
2) Selecting 'Everyone', and then publishing to only private group(s), will automatically change the access settings to 'Select People and Groups' (post-publication). ONLY the members of the selected private group(s) will then be able to view the published content.
3) Choosing 'Select People and Groups', will limit access to members of the group(s) selected. Therefore, individuals who are not members of the chosen group(s), will not have access to the content, even if the groups are public.
NOTE: If you publish an article (or image) to a private group, it WILL appear under the 'Recent Articles' list, as well as all other listings on Gather...but it will ONLY appear to yourself, and other members of the private group.
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Comments: 10
No one really posts and there are 130 people. I posted an article on Oct 28th and still no one has rated or commented on it.
About ready to just give up on some of these groups as the same people keep posting off topic to them and there is a description and these do not fit the description of the site.
It is true that private groups can face publishing challenges (as they are not open to everyone), but they can also serve an essential purpose. For example, there are several groups on Gather that are devoted to a particular writing craft. Members of these groups do not want their articles viewed by anyone outside of the group. The same applies for support groups, as members want, and need, to maintain their privacy. I belong to a few private groups, and they can be very useful for working collaboratively on projects, among other things.
Just to confirm, in 3) above. If I publish to select people and groups, and one of the groups is public, what I publish is or is not visible to people outside my groups and connections?