Thank you, Shal.  You hit the nail on the head rather  than the thumb.
The Angst is a result of being told "you need a transplant."  ..Of course you are more interested in why, how, etc than "stupid logging in crap".  Deal with all that later.
--

Bob Bellizzi

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

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 11:31 AM, Shal Farley wrote:

I think the issue is that the group's Messages may not be public.

If not then the link won't work - it will redirect the person to log in.

Shal, Brian gets that but thinks the person should be savvy enough to log in, or learn to. I'm on the fence but I think it's a good feature no matter which side of the fence you're on.
 
--
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 Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 05:46 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

I've changed it so that we only display photos in the Emailed Photos album that are larger than 100x100 pixels. Hopefully this will cut down on junky sig images. I'm looking into eliminating dupes as well.

Mark -- I've done a little testing on this one.

It appears that if the image is less than 100 pixels in either dimension, it won't show up in Emailed photos. So this should also help the little PNG file that W10 Mail inserts as a reply separator. All good so far.

The images, however, still display in the message archive, and still get forwarded in the group's sent emails. So they will continue to proliferate in subscriber replies, accumulate in group storage, and count against quota. Those things are not so good from my perspective.

Lacking the ability to strip and discard such images, it seems to me that this change could have the undesirable consequence of making it harder for the group Owner to find sig line images and delete them. Or is there a fine point that I'm missing?

Regards,
Bruce

Brian,

I don't get the idea of re-sending a message, in its entirety, by
e-mail at all. ... why not send the direct link to the message that
the user can click to read.

I think the issue is that the group's Messages may not be public.

If not then the link won't work - it will redirect the person to log in. I think it is the extra steps of dealing with a Groups.io logon (as simple as that is) that Bob is trying to avoid.

There are work-arounds, like using a public Wiki or a subgroup with public archives, but both of those require more effort on the part of the group moderators/mentors to curate the existing messages into generic help pages. That's a fairly big ask. And probably a better topic for GMF than here (how to use existing features to get what you want).

Shal

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 10:43 AM, Bob Bellizzi wrote:

it's sink or swim right off the bat

To further mix metaphors, it's different strokes for different folks. ;) Seriously, different groups have different cultures, stress levels (e.g., medically oriented groups probably have more), and internet chops. It's a balancing act.
 
--
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

I would like to features added to Photos and Files that allow posting comments and possible liking photos and files uploaded to the group. These should be able to be managed by the owner and moderator should they feel a comment is inappropriate and needs to be deleted.

Mark,

I've just pushed a change that will remember a user's sort field/order
when viewing the Photos section. I will add remembering sort
field/order when viewing an album next week, because it's late right
now.

I may be too late in saying this, but perhaps you should have rolled back the prior change to date order before rolling out this change.

That would have preserved the "least astonishment" principle by having no change in site behavior until a user explicitly changes their sort order.

Shal

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 09:24 AM, Brian Vogel wrote:

Most of the groups I am on here are not frequented by tech geeks and virtually all of them, save this one and the Group Managers Forum, are used by individuals of all ages who are blind or visually impaired.   All of them are "sophisticated enough" to know how to click through on a link to read something and, if they are not, they need to become so.

So Brian, it's sink or swim right off the bat you throw them into the deep end and if they don't get it, their tough luck?

We are focused on helping the patient regain their functions rather than teaching them how to use the internet.  It may be inefficient but it's effective and has been for almost 2 decades.
 
--

Bob Bellizzi

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

--
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

Kind of a Grub Hub of info?
--

Bob Bellizzi

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

A non-internet savvy user has become a member of a patient advocacy and support group because they have just been delivered a diagnosis of a very  rare disease and the busy, busy specialist is not a good communicator.  They were told "Go to the Internet to find out about it."   Really, this is a frequent occurrence.

If you have never had a medical diagnosis that threatened your independence or way of life or was otherwise life changing you would understand the panic and stress it brings on and that damn specialist only had t5 minutes for me?

They need information and support and ask the same questions that have been answered many times over decades but they are new to all of this and really aren't interested in the finer points and existential usages of groups.io.

They're not used to much in the way of the Internet and at this point further instruction in its' finer points will turn them off because their goal is information about what's next, etc., not internet education.

We have 20 years of questions and answers now and we would like to utilize some of our library of excellent answers for their education and to get them to understand that many others "have been there and done that".  Telling them to go to our group and look at message #160233 won't cut it but sending them that message of how someone else handled it will.

The Mentors supply a level of group-experienced help and are picked for their role because of attributes like patience, communication skills, patience and ability to ferret answers from our archive.  They help newbies transition into the system providing answers and help and a great deal of stress relief for panicked people.

--

Bob Bellizzi

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

J,

           I'm not saying, in any way, that the function might not be useful, but that given what you need to do to find a specific message number for a message you no longer have at hand, the only way I know of to get that is searching the archive for the message content that lets you find the message then snagging the number.

           I have old individual messages that allow me to go either straight to that message in the archive, or to its topic, but if I have that I don't need a "call function."  If I were supplying a message number to anyone after having located it for them I'd give it to them in the form of the direct link to same.  In the digests I have the View/Reply takes me not to the message itself, but the topic.  The format may have changed since the last ones I generated, though, as I use the web interface almost exclusively.

           It never hurts to have "one more road to Rome," I guess, but it certainly can make things more complicated than they need be, and this is a case where I think that's what it does.

--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763 

     I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

           ~ Jay Gould, U.S. financier & railroad robber baron (1836 - 1892)

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 09:24 AM, Brian Vogel wrote:

the only way I know of for anyone to have obtained same is to have looked up the content on the archive,

I wondered about that downthread, but I think they can get it from the digest or summary, and Bob mentioned a couple of other methods in response to the same question from me. I agree with you on the teaching, and I sometimes ask members to do things for themselves (e.g., create their own auto-signature) to force them to learn how to log on, etc. That said, I think this would be a useful feature even in groups where the members are not generally internet-impaired.
 
--
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

I don't get the idea of re-sending a message, in its entirety, by e-mail at all.   If someone has a message number then the only way I know of for anyone to have obtained same is to have looked up the content on the archive, in which case why not send the direct link to the message that the user can click to read.

Most of the groups I am on here are not frequented by tech geeks and virtually all of them, save this one and the Group Managers Forum, are used by individuals of all ages who are blind or visually impaired.   All of them are "sophisticated enough" to know how to click through on a link to read something and, if they are not, they need to become so.

We do members no favors by encouraging any kind of "digital illiteracy," and there are very, very few people today who don't know how to use a web browser, so clicking through on a link to a message in the archive and having it presented should not pose a challenge.  If it does, then teach.
--

Brian - Windows 10 Home, 64-Bit, Version 1809, Build 17763 

     I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half.

           ~ Jay Gould, U.S. financier & railroad robber baron (1836 - 1892)

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 12:45 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 07:52 AM, Gerald Boutin wrote:

Why not just have the mentor send them the message / article in the first place?

Oh, also, that would be a good addition anyway, as suggested by Jeremy downthread (and I think by Shal and others in the past): the ability for a moderator to send a specific message to a specific member.
 
--
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

 You seem to be missing the subtlety of my comments. I am suggesting that this can already be done and does not require any new functionality.

--
Gerald

On Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 07:52 AM, Gerald Boutin wrote:

Why not just have the mentor send them the message / article in the first place?

Oh, also, that would be a good addition anyway, as suggested by Jeremy downthread (and I think by Shal and others in the past): the ability for a moderator to send a specific message to a specific member.
 
--
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 Sun, Mar 24, 2019 at 07:52 AM, Gerald Boutin wrote:

A non-internet savvy user has to communicate with a mentor

All this stuff about the mentor is just a particular use-case. I think the feature would be handy in general, in other situations besides Bob's group. I'm sure Bob has it figured out how he would best use it in his group.
 
--
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

I'm still stuck on how this is going to work in practical terms.

A non-internet savvy user has to communicate with a mentor to find out what they need. Not clear how the user contacts the mentor. The mentor figures out what the user needs. The mentor tells the user to send an email with a specific subject line to a specific email address. Do we expect the user to get this right the first time?

Why not just have the mentor send them the message / article in the first place?

--
Gerald

On Fri, Mar 22, 2019 at 10:23 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

I've just pushed a change that will remember a user's sort field/order when viewing the Photos section.

Now that this has been added, I'd like to see the default changed back to Sort By Title.  This would allow those groups that had undertaken the extra work to get things sorted the way they wanted, based on title, to continue to use their method.

Thanks,
Duane

Two thoughts on possibly adding to this I've had:
1) a corresponding 'SendMeTopic' command, to do the same for a whole topic (either as individual e-mails, or some sort of summary or digest)
2) a command - either via e-mail or web - which would probably need to be available only to (selected) moderators (e.g. 'mentors' mentioned above) - to send a specified message or topic to a specified member.

Also - a thought which occurs to me - would an (e-mail) command to send a suitably tailored link (could this be set up to obviate any need to deliberately logon, by use of the same sort of 'logon token' involved in the logon by e-mail process?) for a member to go straight into the relevant message or topic webpage avoid some of the issues people see with e-mailing old messages, while meeting the identified need?

And I can see the desirability of being able to tailor the availability of any of these at a group level.   

Jeremy