This group was awarded the Great Group Award

Now that squidoo HQ is taking a serious look at groups, I find I'm getting more picky about which groups are allowed in here.

Groups with over a 100 lenses should either feature ALL lenses (which I don't think is reasonable, but some do) OR have a link plexo for all lenses that aren't featured OR promote lenses in the group on some group blog or something - and not just the high ranking ones. Preferably on some quality criterion (and lensrank isn't one).

The main fact is:

Group masters are privileged and usually don't realize it. While groups generally don't rank very well in google, they do have all those lenses linking to them. Which means that whatever squidoo groups link TO, is far more likely to rank in google than before.

Bigger groups are therefor even more powerful. In the case of big groups I'm being very careful to only give the award to those groups which use this power to serve ALL lensmasters in the group, though with preference to quality. A bit of self promotion is alright of course as maintaining a group is work.

One more thing:

Big groups start out small. If you are going to submit your lens to a group with over a hundred lenses in it, make sure it qualifies on the above grounds - even if it IS featured here. After all, I can't go policing groups to see whether they still qualify for this award. I hope they do. When I see them becoming purely self promotional for any group owner, the feature here can be withdrawn, but that's the exception. In most cases I leave it up here. In other words: this award is no guarantee of lasting quality.

1. An excellent group is devoted to a theme.


2. An excellent group page is well organized, preferably by subject.


3. An excellent group editor is selective: unqualified lenses just don't get in - not even when they were made by the editor.


4. If all lenses by members aren't featured, there is a link plexo in which members can get their lens listed.
   They were good enough to get in, why not give them a chance to be on the page?


5. If there are a lot of links, the plexo's are organized by subject, not just by who got in first.


6. The group page features lenses.


7. The group page features more than just lenses by the group owner.


8. Any group that gets members involved or otherwise stands out is also likely to get accepted, even if not all the above standards are met.
   


9. Please edit: if you say you are only going to link to lenses, don't accept other links - or change the description on the plexo. I like consistency.
   


10. Group owner can be reached! (This one's important. A great group by a non-reachable lensowner is not going to get in here).


11. Groups that don't look maintained aren't going to get in either.
    

<a href="http://www.squidoo.com/great-groups"><img
src="http://www.katinkahesselink.net/squidoo/group-award-2-k.jpg"/></a>