On my profile, there is a section called "Groups"  What is that for?  I don't see groups any where in the site.  Given that it gets a whole tab in my profile, it seems kind of important.  

 - Thanks.

Good question.

Groups are showing in profiles but not enabled yet because we haven't decided how we want to approach them.

Essentially groups are a topic area with related forums, articles, blogs, etc. that can be a sort of microcommunity within GameDev.net. Think of them like "clubs" with all the same site features as GameDev.net.

Some ideas being considered for these:

1. Create groups aligned with the current site categorization (Programming, Visual Arts, Game Design, etc)
2. Allow members to create groups, potentially to be used for
   1. Projects
   2. Topics of interest to the member
3. Create groups for major industry topics
4. All the above

One reason for the delay is that as a moderated community it can be difficult to prevent illicit groups from being formed, especially with thousands of members. We already have enough spam problems.

Another reason is the question of whether allowing groups would fragment the community or allow more specialized communities and topic areas to emerge.

And finally, we want to make that they are successful and communication of what they're intended to be is clear when we launch them. I'd also like to have a few established groups as examples too.

So that is groups, and why they aren't available yet.

Of course, I'll gladly listen to any thoughts, comments, or questions from the community about any of the above here in this thread.

Would groups communicate with each other through chat or forum?

Also could anybody start a group or would they be premade?

9 hours ago, iedoc said:

Would groups communicate with each other through chat or forum?

Groups could potentially have any of the features available elsewhere on the site (forums, blogs, galleries, etc.) associated with them - as @khawk mentioned above, we haven't really nailed down any specifics though.  Our Discord Chat isn't currently an integrated part of the site (although we are investigating potential ways to bring them together more), so group chats aren't an "out of the box" feature, but they're certainly something we'll consider if there's demand.

9 hours ago, iedoc said:

Also could anybody start a group or would they be premade?

Also not yet decided, and will really depend on how we decide to use this feature.