On Sun, Mar 17, 2019 at 06:34 PM, D R Stinson wrote:

That's where the Catch-22 begins. You can't find their messages until you've already *found* one of their messages, If it's a member who hasn't posted in a while, you're stuck.

I'm not sure why you have brought this topic to beta quite so soon. OK; I'll accept that finding a member who hasn't posted for a while does make things more difficult, but only slightly. To find any given member at random you need to know one of two things; either their Display Name or their email address, or at least part of it. If you know neither then you really are stuck, but then what would you expect?

If you know one or the other then a search of your membership list using the D/N or email address as the search term.. et voila! You have found them and can then investigate everything you need to know. If you have no information about their identity then it becomes like looking for a needle in a haystack without knowing what either a needle or a haystack looks like, and Mark won't be able to resolve that for you!

Chris.

I find myself needing to find some posts by a group member, which prompted the following exchange on GMF:

Is there a simple way to pull up all the messages by a member?

Yes.

1) Find one of their messages, then select "All Posts by This Member" from the More hamburger menu.
2) If you click on their name at the top of the message, it will open their profile. The profile contains the same link.
3) You can also access their profile via the Directory, or using the "View Profile" link at the top of their record in the Members List.

That's where the Catch-22 begins. You can't find their messages until you've already *found* one of their messages, If it's a member who hasn't posted in a while, you're stuck.

Would it be possible to have that search option after we select a member in the member search?

Alternately, would it be possible to have the option under message search to search for sender, probably including email address?

Thanks for your time, Mark. I hope you're enjoying a pleasant Sunday!

Dano

In reviewing this topic, here is the question that arises for me, out of Tom's post in this thread:

from the "users" point of view, there is also the question of "Did Mark read this, what does he think, and is he going to do something about it?"  And then the question is "When, and where does it fall on the list?"

I know that if this post goes through, then Mark has read it, because the topic has timed out to moderated status. :) So I want to say that the question still remains (for me) whether Mark has seen/noticed/"internally processed" various suggestions of mine - e.g., currently, re use of the "created" field in the banned list and the issues with the multiple entries in the "past" list - or whether I should repeat them yet again. I will hold off for now, but in the future, if issues deeply related to (but somewhat separate from) a current Topic arise, I'm still not sure whether I should start a separate thread or assume that if I include them in the current thread, they will get attention too. I hope that this conversation about Mark's work flow, although on moderated status at this point, will continue, because I don't think the policies for us users making suggestions are totally clear yet. 

--
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

Mark,

It may be as simple as working on ways to increase revenue resulting in hiring some help. Additional help would give you the bandwidth to answer most of your questions. Also, I bet that you could put together a volunteer advisory committee, rather than leaving it open to anyone (like me) to give you input and redirect your priorities..

Revenue:
I think that I was a accidental part of you potentially increasing revenue when I indirectly suggested support on the Yahoo transfer for a revenue subscription. I am sure that there are other ways, and you probably know what can be done.

Advisory Committee:
That is probably the easy part.

I hope that my suggestions are not too forward as I am basically a newbie.

Good luck.

Bill

In the course of commenting on another topic I had occasion to review the list of hashtags for beta. Here are my notes;

I think #feature, #featurerequest, #newfeaturesuggestion, #request, #suggestion, #suggestions, and #wishlist might be redundant - all topics in beta now are supposed to be a suggestion.

Which also means that #bug, #bugs, #defects, #question, #questions, #semibug, #semi-bugs, #tech-support, #tinybug and #weirdness are probably obsolete.

Shal
And by the way, "bump" for your goal in this topic.

Maria,

It may need improvements to make it more dynamic, and it may need to
omit stuff that didn't have any activity – but it's by all definitions
an activity feed, not an aggregate summary.
...
Trying to avoid the word feed just because platforms many of us
dislike may use it, is not good enough a reason,

That was not my motive. I was thinking of feed as in RSS feed. And this doesn't seem like that to me (not to mention the confusion that individual groups have RSS feeds already, those with public messages). I'm guessing here that you're referring to Facebook's news feed.

This is different in that the recent items are grouped by group, and within each group grouped by kind of contribution (Topics, Events, Files, etc.). Not all in strict chronological order, which is the connotation I have for "feed".

To me, the list of groups ...
... does not serve as a way to on board a new member in to the
environment, nor does it help existing members get a sense of what's
going on, what there is to look forward to etc.

I guess the key watershed is how many group subscriptions one has. If it is only one or a few then yes, the list of groups doesn't add much.

Conversely, if one has many subscriptions then the long list in /feed makes it difficult to get an overview of what's going on, versus the concise list of Your Groups (which may be sorted by Latest Message, if you like). Maybe my suggestion about having a TOC on the side of the feed would overcome that problem.

I love that this page is aiming to have a place where a new member
gets the sense of how vibrant a place this is immediately, and from
there decides where to go, what to do, and mostly, comes back.

It is attractive I'll grant. And maybe that's reason enough to promote it to the home position. Given that the more utilitarian Your Groups is only a click away maybe that's ok.

Shal

J,

Do you think it merits its own thread, ...

I would have said its own thread, except this one has already veered from the Pending Members list to the Members list proper. So I'd say it is ok as an extension of the issues of using "Joined" for the creation date of records in all sorts of member-related lists.

I'll see if Mark responds to this in this thread and if not, I may
start a new one.

I haven't seen any evidence that Mark has made progress on his idea to use beta to track suggestions, replacing Trello. Maybe he's found an off-list way to track them, or maybe he's been too busy implementing to do much tracking.
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/24224958

Even so, I think the best thing we can do to help him out is to make sure that each distinct suggestion has its own Topic.

"Distinct" might mean something different to Mark, who knows the structure of the system, than to we users, but we can do our best to intuit what things likely go together. It would likely also be helpful, although a bunch of work, for anyone with the inclination to search out prior Topics that might be the same or similar and cite them in the new topic.

I belatedly realize I failed here, but it would likely help to also review beta's Hashtags and apply appropriate ones when creating a new topic. For this one:

#members #pending #suggestion

I'm a little surprised #pending doesn't already exist. There are probably topics about pending members and/or pending messages that should have it.

Shal

On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 04:20 PM, Shal Farley wrote:

Shal, do you also concur with the problematic title ("joined" instead
of "banned") in the "banned" list, ...

Yes.

Good, because I would like to bump it up in Mark's consciousness. :-) Do you think it merits its own thread, or has this issue already been made plain enough?

and with the (somewhat) problematic situation where past members have
multiple entries in the "past members" list?

I've no experience with that. And it is distinct enough that it probably merits a Topic of its own (if there isn't one).

The issue is that the "past members" list is keyed on actions (removals or members leaving), rather than the members themselves. So it can be very confusing, because it is labeled "past members," because members show up multiple times, once for each "removal" or "left" action. I'll see if Mark responds to this in this thread and if not, I may start a new one. However, I feel like I've already brought it up in the past and don't want to be a pest by repeating myself over and over about it.

--
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

J,

Shal, do you also concur with the problematic title ("joined" instead
of "banned") in the "banned" list, ...

Yes.

and with the (somewhat) problematic situation where past members have
multiple entries in the "past members" list?

I've no experience with that. And it is distinct enough that it probably merits a Topic of its own (if there isn't one).

I've heard a rumor that the PTA unit I assist is planing to stay Premium year-round, so I might see more of the Past Members list in the future. But I think it is relatively unlikely in that case that any would come back later (much younger sibling maybe?).

Shal

On Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 03:48 PM, Shal Farley wrote:

And on a general principles basis, I think keeping distinct metadata for distinct events is probably good.

I concur there.
 
--
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 Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 03:48 PM, Shal Farley wrote:

I concur with J

Shal, do you also concur with the problematic title ("joined" instead of "banned") in the "banned" list, and with the (somewhat) problematic situation where past members have multiple entries in the "past members" list? 
 
--
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

Mark,

For restricted groups, when you approve someone, is it ok for the
Joined date to be the date that they applied, or do you want the
Joined date to be the date that the person's application was approved?

I concur with J that either way it goes the column header should reflect that choice: "Applied" or "Approved"; saving "Joined" for unrestricted groups.

But since you asked, I also concur with the slight preference for Approved.

And on a general principles basis, I think keeping distinct metadata for distinct events is probably good. You never know when it might enable a feature no one has thought of yet. Like an entry in a proposed group statistics page showing the average time to approve new members.

Shal

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 07:53 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Updates to /feed page based on feed ... back.

Tee-hee. ;)
 
--
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 Sat, Mar 16, 2019 at 07:01 AM, Shane Davidson wrote:

that page doesn’t show anything of the sort, unless I’m again, missing something obvious

It's not there and this gets requested every couple of months. It's planned and on the Todo list. Meanwhile you have to use the Bcc feature when you send the message.
 
--
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

Is this about logging an activity event or the actual message? I read the topic subject as looking for a saved copy of messages on groups.io instead of / or in addition to the BCC option that already exists.

--
Gerald

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 08:13 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

or do you want the Joined date to be the date that the person's application was approved?

That would make more sense to me as it as the point of approval that a member can effectively join in with group communications.

Andy

On Fri, Mar 15, 2019 at 08:13 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

For restricted groups, when you approve someone, is it ok for the Joined date to be the date that they applied, or do you want the Joined date to be the date that the person's application was approved?

I'm happy with either. Generally I don't need better resolution than a month for this field, and Applied and Joined dates are not far enough apart to make any significant difference.

  - Mark I.

Maybe I should say the mythical notification overhaul. It seems to be low priority.  🙃

--
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

This is on the Todo list for the notification overhaul. 

--
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