Should RB have a facebook presence?

[Sareln]

There should be a way to tie together an interface that posts news stuff to main page & facebook simultaneously.

If you go ahead with a FB page, I think you'd want to make the new mainpage first and then use that to inform what goes on the FB page.

[Azza]

I don't see how a RB Facebook page could be a negative. At worst, it'd be a neutral thing.

[Selrahc]

A RB facebook page could be a good rallying point if something happens to the site. When the site went down, there wasn't really an easy central hub for people to check as an alternative. We ended up just crowd distributing the link to the quicktopic explaining what was happening, but having something like a facebook page would probably be a much easier way to show info like that. Especially for people who aren't really directly involved in the community, but are interested in it. And since facebook isn't at all connected to the hosting mechanisms, then even if something goes properly kablooey in the hosting, it would still be possible to use to get info out.

I wouldn't use it for much else personally though. If it's just a mirror of front page announcements it should at least be easy enough to maintain.

[teleh]

Facebook sucks for so many reasons and I'd probably have a migraine for a few weeks if RB decided a FB group was a good idea. Prejudice aside (there, it's said), I don't see any advantage to it. RB is a good sort of social network, already.

[KingOfPain]

Well, a lot of people park @ facebook, not everyone visits RB daily, or even frequently. It is a good way to stay updated without visiting a site. It is like RSS feeds. There are advantages to be had using social media, in the case of facebook, it is not even a membership or sign up thing (to the RB page), you interact with it (or not) as much as you like. No, liking a page to pull updates from a page does not compromise your security or privacy. And yes there are precautions and that's why I am interested in hearing the negative comments.

facebook aside, what about other social medias?

[spellman]

My main concern with a FB, as already mentioned, is splitting the community. Unless things are updated on both, divergent communities tend to appear. I'm already watching this happen between several groups that have spread over a few media sites like G+. And while I am relatively easy to link to my real counterpart through some Google sleuthing, I'd rather not have a link through Facebook. And I'm not about to make a separate FB account just for RB.

That being said, there are plenty of upsides. Automatic updates. If you make it a Group instead of a Page you can have discussions and posts from members on there. Provides another avenue to drive information more regularly to those who don't check in daily and can help key friends on FB to joining the community. But the majority of those seem like they could be serviced by something just as easily as updating the front page more often.

Still, I almost never 'Like' on FB. So whether it exists or not doesn't concern me unless it becomes a separate microcosm. But we have plenty of those already (dear gods so many PBEMs I'm not lurking, and all the WW).