Happy Holidays!  Thanks for all of your hard work on Groups.io, my little groups are doing wonderfully here.

Barb

Just a comment on bringing up "old" topics.  As Groups.io grows rapidly and adds new groups and owners, it is the nature of the growth that topics will be brought up again, and that as the dynamics change, the majority of members may want to revisit the way something is done.  I do feel like there are folks that want to control everything and have a quasi-dictatorship, and others who simply want a collective group where people can do what they wish (within reason), and everything in between. And of course there is a spectrum to it, so there are folks in the middle too, who want a few controls but not everything.

Personally I get tired of hearing from the umpteenth new person about the bouncing of members when they delete a message from their spam, and I didn't like it at first either, but I came around to it.  It's part of the good problem of the product growing rapidly.

But sometimes an idea doesn't age well, even if it was all battled out years ago, things do sometimes change, and sometimes new members do have good ideas that might even be better.  Just my .02

Barb

Hi Dano,

It's nice to hear from you!
--
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

Barbara,

I think it's fine the way it was.

I concur. The original thought process Mark mentioned still seems sound to me.

The only reason the same doesn't uniformly apply to emailed posts is because email interfaces vary: not all of them mark replies as such using the standard header fields In-Reply-To and/or References.

So when an email posting arrives without such marking, Groups.io has to rely on other signals - currently a combination of Subject match and age of the most recent match.

Shal

J_Catlady wrote:
"... It’s frustrating to spend time and energy to fight so hard for something, and not just personally but with a genuine interest in the product; get a decision from Mark; and then have to fight the same battle over again with newcomers who have not had a chance to even familiarize themselves with the reasoning that went behind the original decision."
_______________________________

J, You're not alone in your frustration. You joined beta not too long after I did and we remember years of past discussions. I used to be much more active in beta, but any more it seems as though there's just no quick way to repost the history of efforts to find resolutions. And if one does that, there are a dozen other ideas that other people have decided to rehash in the mean time, even though they don't understand (or possibly even know the existence of) past threads and history. I've found myself skimming threads or ignoring some because of that frustration. I'm concerned that things I worked for might be undone by people who don't understand, but I'm losing enthusiasm for defending things from the new people who don't care about past reasoning.

I am so very thankful for Mark's passion to groups.io, and his patience and insight into what groups potential is. We seem to have a lot of very tech savvy newcomers here who don't understand that some of us fought for the ability to keep things *very* simple for our groups. My groups are plain text and don't even allow hashtags because they're just noise to our members. We're focused primarily on historical subjects, and those older members and their memories are priceless - we don't want to risk losing them to frustrations with technology. I pay for two premium groups just so I can have the additional moderator abilities to help them when they get messed up and sideways.

For those who still remember our roots, please don't give up. I haven't, but it gets harder as more newbies appear wanting to reinvent the wheel their own way. There are days I feel like I'm surrounded by second-graders and they all have boxes of matches. *sigh*

Dano

Re: Bringing up an old, scabbed-over wound.  

Excuse me for caring, but YES, sometimes newcomers do see a missing feature that makes sense, or conversely one that doesn't make sense, and possibly should be revisited.

And just as other forums say, there's always the DELETE button or just IGNORE the message -- or just don't feel as though you must get back into the fray.  No one is forcing anyone to explain a position, or forcing them to revisit anything themselves specifically.  One does so because one CARES, and so does the newcomer bring up what one might see as being a commonsense feature because of the same reason.

Personally. we have no need for a gazillion hashtags on a topic, but if one needs it, who one group to say that another owner cannot/should not be able -- if it is technically viable and Mark is willing to implement it?  

If you think it will cause trouble in your groups don't enable it (allow members to edit without re-send), or enable it and require such edits be moderated, or don't allow members to edit at all.

 

Shal

EXACTLY!  Why believe it's proper to impose ONE owner's or ONE group's preference onto everybody? 
It's the old story that 99% of the rules are made for 1% of the people.  Simple - just don't allow it if YOU don't want it. 
Adults that can edit their posts needn't be treated like other kindergarteners.

Enjoy your holidays, Mark
--

Bob Bellizzi

Founder, Fuchs Friends ®
Founder & Executive Director, The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

Sure, an option is fine. It’s frustrating to spend time and energy to fight so hard for something, and not just personally but with a genuine interest in the product; get a decision from Mark; and then have to fight the same battle over again with newcomers who have not had a chance to even familiarize themselves with the reasoning that went behind the original decision. I have not noticed Mark particularly or spevifically encouraging this and hope he realizes the demoralizing effect it can have on those of us who fought so hard. I wish somehow that stare decisis applied in this situation. The ruling has already come down and then suddenly, here we go again...I doubt the arguments pro and con will be any different from what they were two years ago. There’s no reason for them to be. So why do it all over again?

--
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

On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 06:35 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

It's not even debatable any more, really.

I believe Mark has always encouraged revisiting topics, especially when new people come along and have different, possibly better, ideas.  In this case, it could be an additional option for owners to use or not.

Duane

Jim, game of telephone. They would be allowed, but not allowed to start new threads. And Mark has done the programming necessary to detect this situation. Or I’m misunderstanding your question. It does not seem to be rocket science...???

--
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

Right. And this is apparently Ground Hog Day. 🦊

--
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

Received from J_Catlady at 12/18/2018 05:44 PM UTC:
 

On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 09:43 AM, Jim Higgins wrote:
Assuming it isn't allowed, how will it be detected and enforced?

They would be threaded into the existing topic.

Seriously? Why would a message that isn't allowed be threaded into the existing topic? What's the point to considering disallowing off topic messages from being threaded into the existing topic if off topic messages will be threaded into the existing topic?

And far more importantly, as I asked above, how would such messages be detected? It would take some really sophisticated AI programming.

What am I missing?

Jim H

On Tue, Dec 18, 2018 at 08:03 PM, Shal Farley wrote:

Correct. I think that decision was an overreaction.

 

I've seen enough cases now where a member made an inconsequential spelling or grammatical fix which really didn't merit re-sending to everyone's email Inbox, the Edited flag on site would have been sufficient.

All I can say is, you're lucky. I have seen the flip side of this -- where the edits made are NOT inconsequential, and in fact changed the entire tone of the original post.

Unlike group owners, the vast majority of my subscribers do the most of their interaction via email. These folks do not routinely have access to the Edited flag, or previous message revisions...they don't even know such features exist. They only know what has appeared in their inbox.

Please consider how disconcerting it would be to reply to someone's email -- even perhaps quote part of the text -- only to eventually log on and find that the original post now bears no resemblance to the email they replied to. If we're going to allow people to edit their posts at all, forcing those edits to be resent to the group is one thing that groups.io got right.

My $0.02,
Bruce

Have a very Happy Holiday!!! Thanks for all you do in making Groups IO a great place to house my groups. Enjoy your time off! Ilene