It's a new fall term, and we've got new members, so we've sent out a handful of new invitations. The mail.com and gmail.com all worked fine, but we have exactly two new members with hotmail addresses, and both of those are reported as Failed 550.  (e.g. Failed - 550 5.5.0 Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable. [DB5EUR03FT029.eop-EUR03.prod.protection.outlook.com])

Since we have exactly two, that's not enough to necessarily establish a pattern. It could be coincidence that they're both hotmail addresses, or it could not.

1. Is anyone else having trouble with hotmail addresses? And, these failures are *immediate* so it's something quite at their source.

2. Given that this is happening, if I decide to pay for the month just to be able to manually add the addresses myself as the group owner, would getting around the invitation problem likely protect me from regular message delivery problem, or is this the sign of annoyingly bad things to come, even if the members were somehow subscribed?  :)

Our group isn't necessarily the most tech savvy bunch, but I'm going to see whether these two members are able to go to the website themselves and apply to join the group and see what happens. Maybe initiated on their end will also circumvent the problem.

Thanks for any thoughts/comments on this!
Sarah.

Group Managers Forum subscription reminder #admin

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Reminder: Group Managers Forum subscription reminder #admin

When: Tuesday, 1 October 2019

View Event

Description:

This is your monthly subscription reminder for the Group Managers Forum. We are glad you joined our group.

• Our GMF Group's web resources are open and public. Our Messages archives and Wiki are viewable and searchable by non-members. GMF message archives are indexed by major search engines. Unfortunately, due to Groups.io restrictions, you must be a member of GMF and logged in to access our Files and Photos sections.

• We expect members to post and act responsibly. Please respect your fellow members' time and attention: strive to be clear, concise and courteous. Our subject matter naturally includes matters of opinion; if you happen to disagree with another member please do so without being rude. Personal attacks are not allowed. Solicitations are off topic and will be deleted without comment. Listing your groups in your signature is perfectly acceptable, but just make sure there's also on-topic content in your post.

• Attachments are allowed and the judicious use of screen shots and other illustrations is encouraged!

• All messages sent to GMF are moderated. This is done to avoid malicious attachments, spam, off-topic messages, and messages from spoofed or compromised mail accounts. Despite these measures, be aware that the bad guys are clever so there's no guarantee that we'll always succeed; you are encouraged to be vigilant against any and all threats arriving via email. Your GMF moderators make no guarantees regarding the safety of emails arriving from this or any other Groups.io address.

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On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 01:23 PM, Bob Bellizzi wrote:

What page did you link to that showed that  information about it not working.

The wiki page of information, here on GMF.  https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Facebook-Integration

Duane
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Hey Duane,
You  said "  At the top of the page I linked to, in big red letters, |"
What page did you link to that showed that  information about it not working.
Mine is not working but when I go to that integration control page in our group it  has no info nor any link to a message.

--

Bob Bellizzi

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 05:16 PM, Michael Pavan wrote:

The verbiage 'Needed' in "Subscription Approval Needed" and "Message Approval Needed" notice messages iseems to be misinterpreted as meaning 'required', and that some Moderators believe they must APPROVE, as that is what they are 'supposed to do'.

Um. A moderators they are supposed to know what is what and what, er, isn't. The original post in this topic read (inter alia) while I waited for to get additional information from them. This implies the use of a Pending Subscription message, although it isn't entirely clear that that is what was meant.

If the "rogue moderator" didn't know that then it can really only on the basis that he or she had not been informed as such. It is arguable that an anomaly exists because a moderator can set their own notification about whether or not they are informed when there is an applicant awaiting approval without their being able to see the reply to the Pending Subscription message.

All in all this looks like a case where Moderator Permissions and Moderator Notifications / emails were inconsistent with each other, along with an absence of a clear brief about what individual moderators were supposed to do.

Chris

If you are the owner, you can change the moderators so that they cannot approve pending members.  Take a look at what privileges they have.   Gloria

This is not the first (and likely not the last) time a Moderator has acted reflexively. The verbiage 'Needed' in "Subscription Approval Needed" and "Message Approval Needed" notice messages iseems to be misinterpreted as meaning 'required', and that some Moderators believe they must APPROVE, as that is what they are 'supposed to do'. Some may even fear that if they do not approve their email List may cease to function.

It would be better phrased as:
"Subscription Approval Requested" and "Message Approval Requested"
or "Subscription Approval or Rejection Requested" and "Message Approval or Rejection Requested"
or perhaps the more neutral "Subscription Request Received" and "Message Requiring Moderation Received"...

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 03:41 PM, Wizard wrote:

I did.

I'm not sure what you're referring to here.  At the top of the page I linked to, in big red letters, it says that FB integrations aren't currently working, along with a link to the post in the beta group where any updates should show up.

Duane
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You can check the activity of the group to see who approved those members. Click on Activity Then Click on Moderator Activity - there you will see who actually approved those members.   There is a check box when approving members that will let you approve all the members all at once. All that is needed to do is go to pending membership and click the box that says display name. Now all the pending members will be checked. Then the blue box at the bottom where it says action, open it, click on approve and then it will ask you if you want to approve all 6 members let's say and when yes is selected all 6 will be approved at one time.   Now what I do when a member is approved in error. I write them a personal note telling them they were approved before they sent back the pending application. If they don't send it back within a day they will be removed from the group. Then I tell them they can apply again but to watch for the pending application which needs to be sent in before approval.   Leeni

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 05:42 PM, Norman C. Berns wrote:

I had about a dozen applications to join pending while I waited for to get additional information from them. I checked the list early today and they were still pending. I went back to the group this afternoon and they had all been approved. There are three moderators who can approve members but I'm the only one who actually does it. And in any case, none of us did a blanket approval of the pending members. 

Is this a bug or is there some secret "approve all" button that I've never noticed? It's very odd and has never happened before. And now the group is stuck with a dozen unknown new members.

Norman,

Look in Admin/Activities as it should say there how the approval came to be.
 
--
Gerald

I had about a dozen applications to join pending while I waited for to get additional information from them. I checked the list early today and they were still pending. I went back to the group this afternoon and they had all been approved. There are three moderators who can approve members but I'm the only one who actually does it. And in any case, none of us did a blanket approval of the pending members. 

Is this a bug or is there some secret "approve all" button that I've never noticed? It's very odd and has never happened before. And now the group is stuck with a dozen unknown new members.

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 02:48 PM, Wizard wrote:

Any ideas?

Yes, see https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Facebook-Integration

Duane
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Hello all,

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 11:12 AM, Gerald Boutin wrote:

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 08:51 AM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 02:37 AM, Lena wrote:

I wonder why implement Upload Folder at all because while uploading to Files or Photos you can select several files with Shift-click or Ctrl-click.

...or Ctrl-A to select all.

I was thinking I would be able to select several folders...or a folder having subfolders...creating some directory structure in one go (an occasionally-asked-for feature). I also thought it would only send one notification.

As implemented, it doesn't seem to add any new functionality at all.

Bruce 
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The system Help is your friend.  https://groups.io/static/help

I agree that this looks like a solution looking for a problem and does still has several rough edges.

On the other hand, my testing shows that while it doesn't show what files are in the directory you select, it does later advise how many files there are.

As far as sub-directories are concerned, I was something surprised to see that it DOES include sub-directories as folders and includes files there as well. At least it did it for the initial one level deep test that I did.

I think the sub-directory feature is susceptible to misuse, accidental or otherwise. In fact, I am trying a test now where I pointed to a directory with 184 files (260 MBytes) and 33 sub-directories and started it off. It is merrily uploading files and despite the UI box staying up, pressing Cancel only closes the dialog box but does not stop the upload process.

I am letting it go to see where / if it stops. In the mean time, although it is at 20% uploaded and counting, no files have yet shown up on the group and no announcement emails have been sent out. I'll check back later and advise how it ended. Since my internet is only 1 mbps upload, this could be a while.

There is also an additional issue in that the description entered when selecting the directory cannot be seen after the upload is complete. At least I could not find how to view it.

 --
Gerald

Follow up.

- All 184 files and 33 folders (including sub-directories) were correctly uploaded to the Files area. 

- 184 notifications were emailed out. Hotmail (Outlook) accounts received all 184 emails. GMAIL only delivered 74 emails. I presume this is a GMAIL issue. Hopefully, GMAIL isn't going to start blocking GIO now.

- The file links in the emails are not correctly formed. They are missing the subdirectory structure, so only files in the top directory have usable links. 

https://GROUPNAME.groups.io/g/main/files/TOPFOLDERNAME/FILENAME.EXTENSION

It sure makes it easy to make a mess of things. If this feature does stay, it seems we are missing the reverse function and that is to be able to download the directory. I would much rather see users zipping files together and uploading a zip file instead of this feature.

--
Gerald

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 08:51 AM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

On Sun, Sep 29, 2019 at 02:37 AM, Lena wrote:

I wonder why implement Upload Folder at all because while uploading to Files or Photos you can select several files with Shift-click or Ctrl-click.

...or Ctrl-A to select all.

I was thinking I would be able to select several folders...or a folder having subfolders...creating some directory structure in one go (an occasionally-asked-for feature). I also thought it would only send one notification.

As implemented, it doesn't seem to add any new functionality at all.

Bruce 
--
The system Help is your friend.  https://groups.io/static/help

I agree that this looks like a solution looking for a problem and does still has several rough edges.

On the other hand, my testing shows that while it doesn't show what files are in the directory you select, it does later advise how many files there are.

As far as sub-directories are concerned, I was something surprised to see that it DOES include sub-directories as folders and includes files there as well. At least it did it for the initial one level deep test that I did.

I think the sub-directory feature is susceptible to misuse, accidental or otherwise. In fact, I am trying a test now where I pointed to a directory with 184 files (260 MBytes) and 33 sub-directories and started it off. It is merrily uploading files and despite the UI box staying up, pressing Cancel only closes the dialog box but does not stop the upload process.

I am letting it go to see where / if it stops. In the mean time, although it is at 20% uploaded and counting, no files have yet shown up on the group and no announcement emails have been sent out. I'll check back later and advise how it ended. Since my internet is only 1 mbps upload, this could be a while.

There is also an additional issue in that the description entered when selecting the directory cannot be seen after the upload is complete. At least I could not find how to view it.

 --
Gerald

It seems reasonable to expect fewer muting problems if you and your moderators
resist the urge to merge (or split), and edit message subject lines with a
lighter hand.

Our merging activity is limited to those replies that the system fails to recognize as belonging to the relevant topic due to the prefixes problem (I have reported this to support).

At the same time, it's my experience that few subscribers
actively use the muting function.

Actually, in my group just one member complained about the muting function, so far.
Thank you for your explanation,
Marina

Hi

The info about paid and free subscriptions is here - https://groups.io/static/pricing

There is information about starting a group and more in the wiki. No login needed to read. 

https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/home

There is also the Help page. 

https://groups.io/static/help

Hope this helps  

Frances
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