It would be handy if the Past members display that currently exists for Premium groups had a "reinstate" function of some kind...effectively Direct Adding that account back to the group.

Thanks for your consideration.

Bruce

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 04:59 PM, Bob Bellizzi wrote:

you don't seem to trust your committee enough to make them essentially powerless moderators  and yet you want to give them a special power to essentially issue broadcast messages.

The trouble with jumping to conclusions is that you can get it wrong.  They have delegated responsibility. Just because an option works for you does not always make it suitable for others.

powerless moderators

A moderator has additional privileges so by definition they are not powerless.

We are happy with the change Mark has made so far but if it gets rolled back then we should be able to work around that with the second option mentioned by Chris. I will test it myself beforehand though.

Enough said on this I think.

Andy
 

I find it curious that you don't seem to trust your committee enough to make them essentially powerless moderators  and yet you want to give them a special power to essentially issue broadcast messages.
I think option 1 would work fine for you.
We have several people, classed as Mentors, who have option 1  privilege.
They are part of our second level in our nonprofit and have never violated their privileges in several years.
Either you trust people or you don't.


--

Bob Bellizzi

I also am not in favor of another button, but I would be happy enough if there were a "Draft saved" message flyover as is done in gmail.com when composing/editing messages or replies.

I would also suggest that drafts be saved when editing a message. I have confirmed (the hard way) that drafts are not saved during an edit message session.

I did submit this latter idea as a suggestion here on beta, but it has never shown up. I recently changed my account for this group and I am still on NMM, but my messages seem to just be disappearing into the ether, so maybe another suggestion would be to add a "reason" response if a message is being rejected.

--
Gerald

On Wed, Mar 11, 2020 at 09:54 AM, Chris Jones wrote:

Option 1 is to make those individuals you want to be able to do the above Moderators, but without any of the "member management" permissions. That would enable them to use the moderator - only hashtags and send special notices when appropriate.

The downside of making other members Moderators is that they also get control over certain group features such as the Calendar and Databases etc. Not something we would want in our case.

Option 2 is to have two announcement tags; #Owner_Announcement which would remain as Use by Mods Only, and #Announcement which would be available to ordinary members. #Announcement would be configured as (a) Messages with this tag will be sent as special notices, and (b) Messages with this hashtag will be moderated.

An interesting alternative and one that could work for us. The #Announcement hashtag settings would also need the Use by Mods Only option unchecked in this case.

any message so tagged needing to be checked by a genuine moderator who could ensure that the feature was not being in any way misused before releasing it.

Agreed. Although I suspect it's easier to mistakenly approve a message with an unwanted hashtag that it is to go through the steps to add one in. Especially when working on a mobile device where small buttons and fat fingers come into play.

Regards,
Andy

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 06:30 PM, Andy Wedge wrote:

That's a big help for us as my co-owner and I want certain messages written by others on our club Committee to go as special messages.

Having spent some time thinking about this I am fairly certain that what you want can easily be achieved without Mark changing anything, depending perhaps on exactly how many "non-moderators" you want to be able to post #Announcements sent as Special Notices. There are (on the face of it) 2 possible approaches. 

Option 1 is to make those individuals you want to be able to do the above Moderators, but without any of the "member management" permissions. That would enable them to use the moderator - only hashtags and send special notices when appropriate.

Option 2 is to have two announcement tags; #Owner_Announcement which would remain as Use by Mods Only, and #Announcement which would be available to ordinary members. #Announcement would be configured as (a) Messages with this tag will be sent as special notices, and (b) Messages with this hashtag will be moderated. This option would result in any message so tagged needing to be checked by a genuine moderator who could ensure that the feature was not being in any way misused before releasing it.

For the record I have tested Option 2 on a test group to which I have access and it seems to work perfectly well. :)

Chris

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 04:44 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

It appears that repeating characters are getting collapsed/ignored. Search on harrrrrr and you'll get the same results.

OK. That sort covers one aspect and I can see that searching for harrrrr gives me the same results as harr. Collapsing/ignoring repeated characters may explain why when searching for harr I get the name Richard in the results.  It does not explain the results when I search for jone which has no repeating characters.  In this case, I see numerous members with the surname Jones but also several that do not contain those consecutive letters in either name nor email address.

Regards,
Andy

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 11:30 PM, Duane wrote:

True, but if it's sent with a Moderator Only hashtag, it will never arrive in the pending area.  It will be held in the Draft area for the sender to remove it.

For a predominantly email based group, holding a message in a users' Drafts folder doesn't help me as an Owner as I won't be able to see or do anything about that. I'm guessing that the only place that may be recorded is the event log and I would have to search for that. Even if a notification was sent to Owners/Mods that this had occurred, it seems like I'd be in a position of trying to talk someone through logging in to the Groups.io site, navigating to their Drafts folder and editing a message to remove a hashtag before sending it again.  That, I fear, would generate a negative attitude towards Groups.io when we are trying to encourage the opposite.

Andy

I was trying to find some specialized content in my wiki marked by the { character and resulting URL ended with /wikisearch?q=%7B and a blank page.
Performing the same search in Messages, I received the normal search page with the URL ending in search?q=%7B

Not sure what the difference is and/or the importance of it but thought as a courtesy I'd let you know about it.

Bill

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 05:57 PM, Andy Wedge wrote:

As an Owner, I can make all sorts of changes to a pending message before releasing it.

True, but if it's sent with a Moderator Only hashtag, it will never arrive in the pending area.  It will be held in the Draft area for the sender to remove it.

Duane

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 10:31 PM, Nina Eppes wrote:

But changing the current "Uploaded" column label to "Modified" would be OK with me as well.

That would work for me too and I think an extra column could clutter a mobile display which I use on a regular basis.

I do agree with the original point though that if a file is just moved, the uploaded/modified date should not change.

Andy

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 09:21 PM, Duane wrote:

I think it should be changed to Date Modified

That would work work for me. Is it practical/reasonably simple to make the date clickable, producing a popup with the change date(s)? Rather than adding a column - that's ok on a desktop, but typically clutters up a mobile device display.

Del

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 09:26 PM, Duane wrote:

If I remember correctly, when a message arrives with a moderator only hashtag, it gets bounced and put into a draft until corrected.

As an Owner, I can make all sorts of changes to a pending message before releasing it. I see effectively changing the status of the message to Special as an extension of those privileges.

Andy

I would be happy to have separate "Date Uploaded" and "Date Modified" (or just "Uploaded" and "Modified") columns in the Files section. But changing the current "Uploaded" column label to "Modified" would be OK with me as well.

- Nina

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 12:16 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Happy to change the label to something else if we can agree on something better.

I think it should be changed to Date Modified.  That could include the original upload, as well any changes caused by moving, copying, etc.  If anyone really needs to know the original upload date/time, they could use the activity log to find it.

That would be better than what we have now, in my opinion.

Duane
PS to Glenn:  Just because no one says anything, doesn't mean there's no opposition.

If a tree falls in a forest...

Best,

Glenn

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 02:19 PM, Chris Jones wrote:

members can somehow circumvent "moderator - only" capabilities

Since in this case it would have to be a moderated message, and a moderator would have to add the hashtag and approve it, I think it would indeed be a moderator using it.  If I remember correctly, when a message arrives with a moderator only hashtag, it gets bounced and put into a draft until corrected.

Duane

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 12:16 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Happy to change the label to something else if we can agree on something better.

I think it should be changed to Date Modified.  That could include the original upload, as well any changes caused by moving, copying, etc.  If anyone really needs to know the original upload date/time, they could use the activity log to find it.

Duane
PS to Glenn:  Just because no one says anything, doesn't mean there's no opposition.

On 3/5/2020 10:16, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Happy to change the label to something else if we can agree on something better.

Thanks,
Mark 

My suggestion would be for two columns: date uploaded and date modified. The first is invariant and never changes, the second changes on re-upload, moves, permission changes, etc.

Best,

Glenn

I am not seeing any opposition to this suggestion.

Best,

Glenn

On Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 05:42 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

I think this probably makes the most sense in a 'principle of least surprise' kind of way...

Least possible surprise to whom? I suspect many (most?) Owners & Moderators would be highly surprised if members can somehow circumvent "moderator - only" capabilities.

Chris