Reminder:
Group Managers Forum subscription reminder #admin

When:
Sunday, 1 April 2018

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We strive to be a resource of the highest quality for owners and moderators of Groups.io groups. We allow as much information as possible from our group to be accessed by visitors! Would you like to be a better Groups.io group owner and/or moderator? Would you like to see even more improvements in Groups.io groups? We discuss our experiences as both group owners and moderators, share ideas for promoting and customizing the content areas, and offer various techniques for managing groups.

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Shal, Founder & Owner
David, Moderator
Duane, Moderator
Latest revision: 2016-09-05

View Event.

Wim van Dam,

Today (March 31) I noticed that on the home page of my group, the
Message History has already started counting two posts towards April.
The posts were all well before midnight, Pacific Time. I'm trying to
figure out why this happened, ...

The table is built using GMT (UTC+00:00) times. April first arrives eight hours earlier in that time zone than in Pacific time.

and of course how I can correct this.

You can't correct it. You could file it as a bug to support@groups.io, or suggest on beta that it be corrected.

There is an associated bug: while the table is built in GMT, the links in it are searching for the messages in your local time zone. That inconsistency is certainly a bug, no matter which way you think the table should be.
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/5382

Shal


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Shal, thank you for the explanation. I wasn´t sure because in other places the term "archives" was changed into "messages".
Victoria
----
In the context of Moderator Permissions it refers to the ability to edit messages that have been posted in the group's Messages
pages.

I'm not certain if it affects the moderator's ability to edit anything else.

Shal

[I'm fresh to all of this. Apologies if this is a FAQ. I could not find its answer though.]

Today (March 31) I noticed that on the home page of my group, the Message History has already started counting two posts towards April. The posts were all well before midnight, Pacific Time. I'm trying to figure out why this happened, and of course how I can correct this. Any pointers? 

 

Thanks

Wim van Dam

On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 06:42 pm, Shal Farley wrote:

NEW: Delete account functionality, without having to contact support.

This is nice to have, especially for Mark as the number of subscribers continues to climb.

He even updated the FAQ page!

Bruce

Sharon,

I set up a custom invitation message but my message is just inserted
in the middle of the default.
...
How do I start from scratch?

As Duane said, you don't. But here's a mitigation idea:
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/message/5779

Shal


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Jim,

The header at the top of his posts (I am moderating all posts) has
"his name via Groups.Io < Word1.Word2 =aol.com@groups.io" where a
typical post of mine just has "name via groups.io"...

As Duane said, that goes with certain email services, AOL and Yahoo Mail among them.

What brought this to my attention is that his posts also are lacking a
"Reply to Sender" link. This is starting cause a lot of trouble in
that folks reply to the entire list instead of just him.

Perhaps he's posting in plain text (like this message)?

Plain text messages have a different footer because you can't have true links in plain text - the full URL is always shown.

I'm assuming your group's Reply-To is normally set to "Group", if so then your members should follow the link to "View/Reply Online" if they want to reply to that member alone. When forming their reply they would click the "Private" button over to the right to switch from group to personal reply.

Or, use copy/paste in their email program, but then they have to fix-up his address (delete the @groups.io part and change the "=" to an "@").

Another option is that you could check the "Force HTML Emails" box in the Message Formatting section your group's Settings page. Then all members will have the formatted footer.

Shal


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Robert,

I don't know what STMP is, but I have a user who claims that Groups.io does not, but  needs to, support his STMP alias of {redacted}.

If he's looking for the equivalent of an Alternate Posting Address in Yahoo Groups, then he can add it to his Groups.io Account page. He should click on his name in the upper right corner of a Groups.io page (when logged in to his primary address) and in the drop-menu select Account.

At the bottom of the page is a section for Advanced Settings For Email Aliases:

If he's looking for the ability to use a single login account with groups having different subscribed addresses then he's out of luck - Groups.io doesn't support that (yet?) nor is there a way to move subscriptions from one account to another nor to merge accounts.

If he means something else then we're going to need clarification on what he's talking about.

Shal


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Hi all,

This week's change log:
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/16505

Feel free to reply to this topic if you'd like to comment on the
changes. Or better yet, if you expect a lot of discussion start a new
topic (or rejoin an existing one) about a specific change.

FIX: Fixed wording in the message visibility sections of the create
group and create sub group pages.

To be consistent with the prior changes to the group Settings page.


Comments about these others are also welcome:

CHANGE: For groups with reply-to set to sender, include List-Post
header in single messages.
NEW: Delete account functionality, without having to contact support.
BUGFIX: In a plain text message, if someone enclosed a link in <
and >, we included the trailing > in the link.
BUGFIX: Don't send event reminders and notices for cancelled events.
CHANGE: If a wiki has a sidebar or footer, disable the 'Add a Sidebar'

or 'Add a Footer' button instead of making them disappear.


Please call out any you find significant.

Shal


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I'm an award winning volunteer beta tester . ( Not there.)
My theory is let them know so they can fix it.
That is best for everyone.

Rick

Chris,

1. Prefer Member's delivery to be changed to "No Mail" with web access
still available; Membership Retained
2. Prefer to leave things as they are; Membership Deleted

Of course this question may be moot, as Mark has somewhat clarified his position on this. In part he says:

"- Having a 'forcing function' that gets people to train spam filters to
not mark Groups.io email as spam hopefully decreases the future
likelihood of emails being marked as spam"
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/16418

I read that as hinting that "dismemberment" is in part a deliberately severe response, in service of the greater good.

To pitch the idea back in beta I really think the only rational option to (2) is to propose a separate subscription status. Call it "Reported" or something appropriate as a parallel to "Bounced".

But the easier you make it for the member to reset the status the weaker it will be as a "forcing function". And for that reason I wouldn't propose to allow a group moderator to reset it; at best a moderator should be able to send a notice to the member about it.

Shal


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Frances,

Rather than “no mail”, I prefer to set GMF and Beta to “first message
only”. Then I follow topics that I want to / need to.

Sounds like a page which should be in the Advice to Group Members section of GMF's wiki. For now I'll cite the help Mock-up page for it, though it really deserves some exposition on the how and why of it.

See this from Help on Muting and Following and Following Topics and
Hashtags.

See also this one on Advanced Preferences, and the section on Muting and Following that follows it:
https://groups.io/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/Help-Mock-up#Advanced-Preferences

As a kind of experiment I put this in GMF's Goodby message:
-----
If you're unsubscribing because there's a lot of messages here, and few interest you, allow me to recommend using your Advanced Preferences to limit the number of messages emailed to you. If you're curious how that works, have a read about Advanced Preferences, and the following section on Muting and Following.
-----
(with "Advanced Preferences" linked to the above URL)

No one who has left has commented to +owner about it.

Shal


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mike,

Is there a way to turn of just these two - ...

If you mean as a member, to ignore other members, no not at present.

You could always set a filter for them in your email interface.

It has been discussed a couple times on beta, the latter at some length:
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/24180
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/2992983

Shal


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Victoria,

What does „edit archives“ mean exactly?

In the context of Moderator Permissions it refers to the ability to edit messages that have been posted in the group's Messages pages.

I'm not certain if it affects the moderator's ability to edit anything else.

Shal


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Special Notices can definitely be a problem if you abuse the privilege and send them too often. But those who have needed to contact their entire group before migration from Yahoo have seen the other side of the "no email" option. 

The bottom line is that for my own reasons I want this feature, and the suggestion that it should be taken out of my toolbox to provide a quick fix to an unrelated problem does not strike me as productive. 

Regards,
Bruce

On Sat, Mar 31, 2018 at 01:16 pm, Paul Ohio USA wrote:

Additionally, would the Group Owner still get a notification of the change and what prevents the owner or member from just changing back to Individual and having a repeat of Spam - Delete cycle?

I would hope so (it would be an integral part of any #suggestion) , and "nothing" in that order! Further to the latter point there is nothing in the existing regime to stop a member  "unspamming" the offending message, clicking "Rejoin" for the whole thing to be repeated again at some future point; I suspect that it is something in the message rather than its origin of Groups.io that offends some spam detectors.

If the existing protocol continues (and the idea of a change is now beginning to look as though it is heading for the "Too Difficult" tray) then the finalisation of the wiki and its dissemination may help mitigate the worst effects. The critical word there is may; publishing guidance and persuading people to read it are very different things.

Unfortunately...

Regards,

Chris

Operator error! My link wasn't there.
https://groups.io/static/help#muting

Frances

Sorry, I think I misunderstood your request. I thought you were the moderator and wanted to stop them from posting. But I think you’re a group member and you want to mute their emails. No, there’s no way to do that.

Sorry, another email!
I can't choose 1 or 2. I am not sure that your fix works for me and it is clear that some groups are having members cut off.

Interestingly, I am seeing that only occasionally in our travel group of over 1100 members. It doesn't happen at all in my small groups.

Would changing someone to "no mail" mean that my group preferences are changed to allow "no mail"?

Frances