On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 10:21 PM, Chris Jones wrote:

Excellent; many thanks for that.

Chris

 Yes, many thanks.

But something which would make it much better would to amend the 'display name' to make it clear that it was from the owner (e-mail - both on reply, and any initial post) - perhaps by adding '(as Owner)' or similar after normal name - so, e.g. (for me) it would say 'Jeremy H (as Owner)', to make it obvious that was speaking with authority, not just another member.

Jeremy

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 04:27 PM, Jim Fisher wrote:

unsubscribed in this way that meant from
every group they belonged to

It's only from the group whose message was marked as spam.

One of my members was unsubscribed for marking a message as spam, thanks to
clicking a wrong link. However, he sent the notification to resume subscription
to me, asking me to reinstate him. This meant that, for the first time, I
actually saw the whole of one of these messages.

1. Like me and many others, the member reads emails in plain text. In the plain
text version the words "Resume subscription" are not linkified, so there is no
obvious way to do what is required. Can we incorporate the full URL into the
plain text version of that message please? Most email clients will linkify it,
and even for those that don't it can then be copy/pasted into a browser.

2. When I switched to reading the message in HTML I could of course see the
link. I was pleasantly surprised to find that clicking on it reinstated him
immediately, which suited my purpose fine. However, I found it meant I was then
logged in to his account. That's no problem for me, but it might bother some
that this is possible.

3. I thought that when someone was unsubscribed in this way that meant from
every group they belonged to. Maybe I've got that wqrong, but if I haven't then
the wording of the message gives a wrong impression because it says "You will
receive no more emails from that group", rather than from any Groups.io group.

Jim Fisher

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 05:00 PM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

I wonder what impact it might have on any Moderators who have had a member-management or message moderation function delegated to them.

Bruce, regardless of any member management permissions a Moderator has, unless they have a membership role of Owner, they are not an owner and sending emails as though they are is fundamentally wrong. The fact that Moderators can alter their own settings to choose whether or not to receive +owner emails just compounds the issue.

The change recently implemented only extends that same behavior to replies.

I don't see how extending the problem really helps. If you want someone to send an email as an owner, make them an owner.  If you want a moderator to be able to send messages or replies other than from their own account, have a +moderator address.

Andy

Just an update since that time, the problem still persists.

Cheers,
Christos

As long as it is clearly documented, I don't see anything fundamentally wrong with a moderator able to send under the owner's imprimatur. When I was in business, I frequently designated an assistant to sign for me. Not something to give out lightly, but extremely useful when you are busy and have an assistant you can trust.
Best, Marv

On Fri, Oct 2, 2020 at 06:44 AM, Andy Wedge wrote:

A Moderator with as many permissions as an Owner can give them, is still a Moderator, not an Owner and being able to send messages with a From address of +owner is fundamentally wrong.  This option should be restricted to Owners only.

Andy -- Even before yesterday's change, Moderators (and Owners) have been able to send +owner messages using New Topic (see the original request). The change recently implemented only extends that same behavior to replies. In addition, any Moderator with access to the Member List could send an +owner message to individuals via the Send Message dialog. Similarly, Moderators who review Pending messages may send private messages to the sender via the +owner address.

Your proposal is an unrelated change that would need to occur in several places, and I wonder what impact it might have on any Moderators who have had a member-management or message moderation function delegated to them.

Regards,
Bruce

Hi,

I tried to search to see if this has been raised before, but I couldn't see it.  

Any chance we could have an option of weekly or monthly summaries? Rather just daily.

Cheers
Mo

On Thu, Oct 1, 2020 at 09:33 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

select replying from the +owner address, if you're a moderator.

This approach is incorrect as far as I'm concerned.  There are three distinct membership levels, Member, Moderator and Owner, and unless someone is defined as an Owner I don't believe they be able to send messages are though they are. A Moderator with as many permissions as an Owner can give them, is still a Moderator, not an Owner and being able to send messages with a From address of +owner is fundamentally wrong.  This option should be restricted to Owners only.

Andy

Excellent; many thanks for that.

Chris

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 01:20 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

Then lets propose it as a feature. Do you want to do it?

Not really. :-)

Bruce

Things have actually gotten worse since the member started using "reply all" instead of "reply." So I am now strongly urgng Bruce's proposed fix.

What's happening now is that the member thoughtfully clicks "reply all," which makes the message go to the individual with cc to the group. Then when the individual replies, THAT message goes out privately rather than to the group. Meanwhile I've asked the member to carefully check her "to" field and remove the individual member's address, leaving just the group address.

As Bruce says, this is certainly happening more often than we realize. How many people use PCs running Windows 10? That's the most up to date version, right? So probably tons of people.
--
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 Mon, Sep 28, 2020 at 07:35 AM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

audit trail ... to include any changes made while in pending status.

Yes, that makes perfect sense to me.   Allow moderators to edit arbitrarily, but shove the "diffs" into an "Activity" record so it edits can not be done secretly.   Also add a "May edit pending messages" moderator permission so groups which do not want any editing can enforce that.

Allowing moderators to edit is useful, appropriate, and necessary for some groups where members are, realistically, not all able to create "well formed" messages on their own.

But other groups will value "non interference" more highly, and would want to prevent any editing by moderators.

On Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 10:11 AM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

I'd be happy to discuss this further but if we're not going to propose this as a feature it should probably be taken o

Then lets propose it as a feature. Do you want to do it? You can state it more accurately and concisely than I can. Probably should stay in this thread? Or start another topic with a more accurate title?
 
--
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 Wed, Sep 30, 2020 at 11:31 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

Thanks, this is awesomely informative. Yes, that seems to be what's happening. It's actually amazing that it hasn't been happening more often. 

I do believe the problem is common, and am surprised it doesn't get reported more often.

As for the groups.io change that you say could be made to rectify this ("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), I think that might cause more problems than it solves, and/or I don't understand it.

I'm not advocating that it be implemented, but it seems to be the only available "fix" that groups.io could apply to a problem that groups.io did not cause. 

It could be done in my group, which has both of those options set. But would that cause emails from this particular person to not have her correct "from" address in emails people receive for her messages to the group? 

No. It would only be applied to messages [s]he receives, and even then only from groups with those particular reply-to settings.

This is entirely analogous to the From rewrite that's currently done for the "I always want copies of my own messages" setting in account preferences, but for a different reason:

• The "always want copies" rewrite is done to munge the From address so when it comes back with a matching From address and message-id, it isn't flagged by GMail (and perhaps others) as a dupe and sent to the bit-bucket.
• The hypothetical account setting I'm talking about would rewrite the From address to match that of the group, thereby ensuring that the RFC5322-noncompliant email client [s]he is using nonetheless sends any replies [s]he composes where they're supposed to go.

I'd be happy to discuss this further but if we're not going to propose this as a feature it should probably be taken off-group.

Regards,
Bruce

Bruce,

Thanks, this is awesomely informative. Yes, that seems to be what's happening. It's actually amazing that it hasn't been happening more often. So far, I've noticed it only with this one group member, and she (thankfully) is extremely cooperative and willing to be careful to always use "reply all."

As for the groups.io change that you say could be made to rectify this ("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), I think that might cause more problems than it solves, and/or I don't understand it. It could be done in my group, which has both of those options set. But would that cause emails from this particular person to not have her correct "from" address in emails people receive for her messages to the group? I think I'm getting "from" and "to" confused in the fix.

Thank 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

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 10:48 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

However, in this case, there seems to be something unique about the one group member's email situation. Hard to know what it is. The "reply" behavior of the other people in my group with aol (at least all the ones who responded to my test thread) is correct according to the group reply-to setting, namely, the reply goes to the group.

FWIW, and in case this helps, the member is using a PC running WIndows 10.

J - It's probably the client software that this person is using to read and compose emails. Windows 10 Mail has been reported to fail to honor RFC 5322 (https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/forum/all/windows-10-mail-app-does-not-repect-reply-to/5ea3d244-4f9b-47b6-ab61-0970d75c4af1). Some versions of Outlook don't follow it, either. I'm not aware of any setting in these clients that can be changed to make them follow the reply-to standard. Others who actually use them might have recommendations, but before going down that road we need to know what your subscriber is actually using.

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.

Failing that, your subscriber will need to either adopt compliant client software, or just get into the habit of checking the To: line every time they reply and correct it as needed.

Hope this helps,
Bruce

On Tue, Sep 29, 2020 at 07:26 PM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

In particular, multiple email clients are known to fail to comply with RFCC 5322, at least by default. Instead of honoring the Reply-to: line, they send the message back to the From: address.

Yes, I've been recently noticing that on my iPhone, a second reply by me to the same recipient instead is sent back to me. I finally figured out that you can subvert this behavior by specifying "reply all."

However, in this case, there seems to be something unique about the one group member's email situation. Hard to know what it is. The "reply" behavior of the other people in my group with aol (at least all the ones who responded to my test thread) is correct according to the group reply-to setting, namely, the reply goes to the group.

FWIW, and in case this helps, the member is using a PC running WIndows 10.
 
--
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

With the exception of the "reply only to sender" topic setting*, there is no way for groups.io to actually force a particular reply behavior on each and every group member. 

The reply-to setting for a group or topic affects only the corresponding field in the outgoing message header (for individual messages), to wit:

Reply-To: main@beta.groups.io

This amounts to a suggestion, and that's all it can do. Whether the recipient complies with that suggestion depends on that person's own behavior (e.g.: reply vs reply all), settings and capabilities of his email provider, and especially the settings/behavior of his email client.

In particular, multiple email clients are known to fail to comply with RFCC 5322, at least by default. Instead of honoring the Reply-to: line, they send the message back to the From: address. Remedying this requires knowledge of both the provider and the client, and even then may not be fixable.

Ref: https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/18853 

Hope this helps,
Bruce

*"Reply only to sender" is different in that if the recipient attempts to send a message back into the same topic, groups.io actively blocks it.