On Sat, Sep 5, 2020 at 01:39 PM, Marina wrote:

NEW: New Group/Topic Reply To Setting: Reply To Topic Followers Only
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I need some clarification on how this new option works.

It's pretty complicated. See https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/76544886 .  Here's what I think's going on, with the understanding that I haven't tested any of this.

Essentially, this setting forces the Advanced Preferences of both "Following Only" and "First Message Also" on all subscribers, except:

• Anyone who initiates a topic (or has replied to it) automatically gets a "follow this topic" record (without having to do so manually), and
• Even if you don't select it in the group settings, you can implement this behavior on an individual topic either by "Edit Topic" or via a #hashtag

Confused yet? Me too.  :-)

This kinda came out of left field, with no preliminary discussion in beta. I suspect an Enterprise group asked for it.

If a topic is set to "Reply To Topic Followers Only" replies to that topic appear in the group message archive or are hidden?

A very good question.

This is not a normal "reply-to" setting. A normal "Reply-to" changes fields in the outgoing email headers, such that in many cases they don't come back to the group at all. But that wouldn't work in this case, because the message must come back to groups.io in order to be routed to those who are following the topic.

On that basis it seems reasonable to assume that all posted messages still appear in the archive and only email delivery is affected (i.e.: the same way that the Advanced Preferences work). But again, I haven't tested it. 

Can moderators view replies to topics set to "Reply To Topic Followers Only"?

There does not appear to be a moderator override. Moderators would be able to read messages online, but if they want to receive emails in a given topic, they would have to meet the same "following" criteria as anyone else. Or such is my understanding.

Hope this helps,
Bruce

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