Knowledge Base: group activity explained

Groups are like little villages within the wider RedBubble community. They can be any size on based around any topic. What makes a group special is the people who breathe life into it and regularly contribute. Groups are a place to meet and connect with other artists.

What is "activity" in groups?

Activity includes, someone joining the group, uploading a work, entering or voting in a challenge or posting in the group forums. Basically anything that contributes to that group.

Calculating activity in groups

From time to time we change the way we calculate group activity, but at the moment we focus on members contributing to the group. If nearly all of your members contribute to the group often, we call that a very active group. If only five or ten percent contribute often, we call that a less active group.

The reason we don't just tally up which groups have the most activity, is because smaller groups would always be at the bottom of the list and small groups can be very active and interesting.

Why are active groups sometimes classed as inactive?

A host may find their group requires regular attention and is attracting new work to it's gallery even though a large number of members no longer contribute, or contribute rarely. The reason for this may be simply that the group's topic, rules or upload limits restrict the participation of members.

Typically, these groups are more like a gallery of work than a place for people to interact. So while a group may still be relatively busy, sometimes it will appear on our inactive list simply because the percentage of the total membership that is active in a group is low.

How can a group be closed?

At any time, one of the hosts can write to RedBubble and request that a group be closed. Groups which have been abandoned and no longer have a host are deleted as reported or discovered. And we periodically write to the least active groups with the view to closing them. When we do this, we always give the hosts some time to reply to us before proceeding.