Evolve Life Itself whatsapp groups to work better

[rufuspollock]

• Space for more active sharing whether in general or a new watercooler ✅2025-12-02 have created watercooler for now and will see how the experiment goes.
• Create moderators group and recruit some moderators (we have a backlog of requests to join).
  • Maybe design a process e.g. people join the welcome group and say hi and then move to general ?? (not sure - want to keep it simple and active)
• Deprecate welcome ??

Discussion re general

On Friday posted

Follow up

Given the responses I thought to share more from my perspective …

tl;dr my thought here was estawatercoolerpattern a bit like the following:

• general light discussion, qwatercooleroordination, everyday chat. exists
• announcements official updates only. exists
• ⁠watercooler more casual, link sharing, higher-volume discussion etc 🆕

And, of course, if watercooler got really active we could split it up.

More context

Sometimes I come across papers,watercooler, Substack threads, or ideas I’d love to share and chat about - and i’m sure others do too. At present, I tend to hesitate to share in general chat, especially if it might be higher-volume or spark longer discussions. e.g. if i started posting a couple of links in a day and then a few others did the same i think it could get a bit much …

My sense is “general chat” is here a bit more like classic #general chats as the arrival place for folks, a place for questions or support, Life Itself updates (that aren’t announcement level which we try to keep ~ 1 a week). It’s less a place for very active sharing and discussion. [At least this is my sense and happy to hear from others as this is emergent]

Hence creating something like watercooler