On Oct 4, 2020, at 2:54 PM, Drew <pubx1@...> wrote:

Forgive me if I have not studied the posts in this thread in detail and have missed something pertinent. I would just like to add the following comment, because it at least refers to a similar situation.

Subscribers using Thunderbird email client software, of which there are many, are presented with two apparent reply options:

- Reply [Reply to the sender of this message];
- Reply All [Reply to the sender and all recipients].

The bracketed descriptions above are what is shown to users when they mouse over the respective buttons.

Unfortunately, both buttons reply directly and only to the group. This can lead to a situation where a user thinks they are replying privately when actually they are responding to the entire group. This has the potential to be a good deal more embarrassing & disruptive than the reverse situation (i.e., when someone who thinks they are replying to the group is actually replying only to the author of the post).

I have suggested implementing an option for group owners who want it, to have the List-Post header included in their group's message traffic, which would restore the option for subscribers to unambiguously reply via email to either the group or the message author. I have no idea if this suggestion is feasible or if it would aid in your particular complaint; it might be something you'd want to investigate.

Drew

On 10/04/20 00:13, J_Catlady wrote:
For users running Windows 10 and using either aol or verizon (=aol) email, and in the setting where a group is set to "Reply to group," a reply via email by clicking "Reply" does not go to the group. It instead goes to the individual member who generated the message, causing a private email exchange that is generally (or can be) unknown by both parties to be private. The message never actually posts to the group, the user probably doesn't realize it, and if the individual who wrote the original message replies to the reply, they, too, are replying privately and are probably, or at minimum can be, completely unaware of that fact.
If, OTOH, such users click "Reply all" from their email, that does not solve the problem. The reply then does go to both the group and the individual (as a cc); however, if the cc'd individual happens to reply from THEIR email by clicking "Reply," their reply does not post to the group (although they probably believe it does) but rather goes privately to the person who replied to their original message, again causing a probably completely unknown private exchange.
Before realizing the specific circumstances of the problem, I started a thread about what I thought was a bug with the "disable other reply options" setting. Eventually, after I determined that one user involved in this kind of situation was on a PC running Windows 10, I posted that piece of information and Bruce posted the following. I have bolded his actual suggestion:
/Currently, in groups.io, the From: address of an individual message
is the same as the person who made the post. *An account setting
could be established to rewrite this From: address to match the
group address, but only for those groups that have both "Reply to
Group" and "Remove other reply options" set.* This is kinda along
the lines of the existing "I'm on GMail and always want copies of my
own emails" account setting. Although I'm reluctant to recommend the
expansion of such account settings, it should work, and is just
about all groups.io could do to address this./
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/26368
Since he was reluctant to make the suggestion, I am now doing it as a separate suggestion/topic, in case it got lost in the tangle of unrelated messages in the other one. Since then I have also found that the problem does not happen with all users running Win 10, but it specifically does reliably occur for people using aol or verizon. Of course there may be other cases, but it does happen with gmail, for example.
In the meantime, I have instructed all my group members using aol or verizon who are running WIndows 10 never use "Reply" to reply to a group message by email because it will not post to the group, and to either post from the web, or use "Reply all" and then go in and manually delete the cc to the individual, leaving just the group address. I've told the people involved that groups.io may come up with a fix, but meanwhile, that's what they have to do.
Thanks.
--
J
/Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones./
/My humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together. - Desmond Tutu
//
/