NING's group interface does not lend itself well to action-oriented
use-- the comments disappear to quickly and don't allow basic things
like quoting, and the discussions tend to not be "seen" and end up
forgotten after a few days.

Thus, some suggestions/requests for how to make this tool work for fighting the bike theft problem:

1) Make frequent use of the "send message to entire group" feature to let
people know of upcoming actions or to solicit specific types of help.
This sends an e-mail alert to most users (unless they've turned all
e-mail alerts off in their prefs, in which case they're probably not
that involved anyways). As a group member please expect a few more group
messages than from other groups.

2) The comments are disabled for now-- I've watched how they work in other groups and they are not
good for much more than social chatter or passing along entertaining
items. Not that there's anything wrong with that, but the focus of this
group is on saving Chicago from the bike thieves-- we wanna get chit
done.  The discussion pane has the maximum (10) discussions visible
which should be enough.

3) You are strongly urged to go the extra step to "follow" each of the discussions by clicking on the follow link
at the bottom of that discussion view. Alas that this is enabled in the
comment wall by default but not in the discussions.

4) Post early and often. Threads and pixels are free. There are no stupid
questions.

5) I will probably never let go of a belief that we can accomplish more if we can leave hierarchical systems of organization behind-- thus  in terms of this effort -everyone's- a leader as the
situation dictates or necessitates; give a shout if you'd like admin
privs for this group.