I have seen posts from other low revenue 501(3)c NPs that like ours cannot sustain the GIO fees being charged for the file storage needed and the ability to directly add and manage our members. 

I have been with Gmail since 2006 and to date, my privacy has not been invaded. I have enabled the privacy settings that I desire and to date they have "worked". In fact, I much prefer my Gmail accounts to every other email account I have created since 1989. I would hazard to guess I have tried out close to 50 of them, most no longer in business.

Google Workspace administers our domain email accounts at no cost to us. Our domain Google accounts do not receive spam. Our non published forum email address has never had even one outside inquiry. It has remained private. Our published forum email address has received spam and it's been caught every time by Google and not been delivered to our members. It is held in a que for me to approve or reject. 

In my opinion Google is not taking over the world. As you said, the anti trust suit is being filed. It may well be justified and result in them abiding by the terms of the judgement. That doesn't make them evil or good. It's simply a factor of how they will need to operate as a business. It's not like they are the first or the only company facing an anti trust action. 

A domain administered free Google Groups has a place in this discussion which billsf9c initiated by comparing the features of a free GIO group to other free groups and forums. I have free GIO groups which, as of now, are grandfathered in but I cannot direct add members.

You are absolutely correct that you get what you pay for. Not all of us have the budget for "the best". (I put GIO Premium in that category.) Some of us need to settle for what we can afford based on a comparison of services that offer the features we need. 

--
Sandi Dickenson
ASG Volunteers Group.

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 09:35 PM, Andrea Grillini wrote:

I rembember at least once I succeeded in editing and I remeber knowing here I could edit a message afterwards was reliefing to me, since I'm often critical toward what I publish, and I'm sorry when I have to live with the mistakes or bad choices I published.

Ah; I can now get a better view of the problem.

The ability of members to edit posts that have been "published" on a group's web UI and by email to the group's members can be disabled by an owner (or moderator) as one of a group's settings, and I can only conclude that that is what has happened in the group where this problem has arisen. When disabled, the Edit Message tab In the "More" hamburger is not available.

The facility of editing messages once they have been posted has its uses, but it must be used with considerable care because if a message is changed after others have responded to it, it may well be that those responses are to something that is changed in - perhaps even removed from - the original message. The result can then be that the thread of the messages ceases to make any sense at all.

Perhaps the owner / mloderators of a group where you can no longer edit messages once posted has decided that such editing is corrupting the "flow" of whatever the topic is and has thus decided to stop members being able to edit messages that have been sent.

It is not a fault of any sort, simply the change of a setting that has disabled members' ability to edit messages.

Chris

Sorry, Chris.

I forgot to mention a practical case.
Though I expected I could edit the message and mend for that.
And, coherently, I couldn't. I attach a scrap with what action I can perform on the message.
I've never been group owner or a moderator here on groups.io, though I rembember at least once I succeeded in editing and I remeber knowing here I could edit a message afterwards was reliefing to me, since I'm often critical toward what I publish, and I'm sorry when I have to live with the mistakes or bad choices I published.

A.

On 22 Oct 2020 at 19:56, Dave Wade wrote:

I am not a lawyer, but I think in the UK it would be a breach of
trademark...

Yes, Mark said the complaint he received was about breach of their UK
trademark.

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 05:30 PM, Andrea Grillini wrote:

I specify I already edited in recent times.

Can you possibly tell us what it is that you have not been able to edit?

Are you a group owner or moderator?

Chris

I feel kind of shy in telling about this subject, both because I arrived on groups.io only recently - I still don't feel confident using the interface - and because I expect that might be a hot topic, possibly someone else might have asked and an answer has been given, though so far I could find just old messages where the editing functionality was still debated, and, as a matter of fact, the documentation cleary states I should be able to edit.

https://groups.io/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/managing-group-topics-and-messages/editing-the-content-of-messages-in-the

I specify I already edited in recent times. I thought there might be some sort of time limit, this is not mentioned in the documentation I pointed to, though.

Thanks!

A.

On Fri, Oct 23, 2020 at 04:43 AM, Sandi D wrote:

Google groups is a known service, it's stable and it's free.

I think you get what you pay for. There's a reason some of these services are "free." In google's case, I don't know the underlying mechanisms but google is trying to take over the world - witness the justified antitrust lawsuit against them - and your privacy is a total black box.

 
--
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 have had 2 Google groups (under a GSuite/non profit) since 2013. I can direct add and remove members. It's an excellent mailing list and offers expansive storage for our attachments to emails. One group is used for our Board of Directors and one is for collecting and distributing publishable news items as attachments. 

Their spam filter doesn't disappoint and the group is painless to manage. Users within our group have no need to create or maintain a password. I can add users by their cell phones and email addresses which need not end in @gmail or be associated with a Google account. 

The current free version of GIO would not tempt me to move from Goodle Groups because of storage limitations, the uncertainty of future GIO pricing tiers and loss of features. Google groups is a known service, it's stable and it's free. 

I agree heartily that Google Groups is not for everyone, nor will it serve the needs of most or many. But it does have a place for us as an educational non profit with minimal revenue where we need control over members in a forum. It works quite well nested within our domain managed GSuite/Google Works framework. 

It's far from perfect but it is free and for the above reasons, I would not advise it should never be considered.

--
Sandi Dickenson
ASG Volunteers Group.

The "15 Gigs" number came from a.googlw member. I understand now, that he may be in error... but if that is his perception, it may be also for many. So I'm not a journalist and didn't go undercover to confirm. If 15 is the personal amount, and goggle lists have no limit, then I don't see what to write on the billboard.

I was fine with 110$. Our otherwise intelligent membership tarried and we got hit with 220... spilled milk.

When folks have suffered with bad service for so long, many forget how NICE it was when eGroups had features and they worked well. Many of us easily ignored the ads, so here, I don't even notice them missing. And many know and notice nothing of googles' privacy shattering, and cannot comprehend it if explained.

But I sure want a way to entice a couple groups over. And after 18 years, I'll dislike in 4 years cleaning house because the next.jump is not a small amount but 19x more than what took us 20 years to accumulate.

As text here is not counted against us, maybe I can make the case that memory is unlimited, with an additional Gig for Photos and attachments.

Thanks for the time everyone has spent on this issue. Now and then I help a small mechanics business. You want the Edsel. 😏🤣
BillSF9c

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 12:53 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Thanks for pointing this out. It's been fixed.

Mark -- Well, not completely.

The notice I received about expiration of the trial has an upgrade link that doesn't work, and took me to the group home page instead of the upgrade page.

Also, the subgroup is not locked...I can still post messages in it.

Thanks,
Bruce 

Indeed, IS was the likely culprit.

Thanks to Mark for getting it fixed.
--
Jim

am not sure why they haven't been migrated to the Freecycle platform.

Not sure of your basis for saying Freegle groups are dwindling. I was

moved

semi-automatically to Freegle, using my existing Freecycle login details,

when

our local Freegle group started, but found the Freecycle group still

remained

active. I find, though, that I still receive about ten times as many

messages

from Freegle as I do from Freecycle.

I think I was moved automatically as well and initially I got lots on
Freegle, but I can't remember when I last saw a Freegle offer.
I checked and my account is still active, and in Trafford there are three
offers from the last 24 hours. In freecycle its three in the last hour.
However I would expect activity to vary from area to area...

Given the reasons behind the creating of Freegle I suspect some kind
of internal politics, but I am sure that Freecycle will claim
"ownership" of any group that purports to use part of its name and
offer re-cycling services.....

Yes, you're probably right there, but that clearly does not include

Freegle. I

would have my doubts about names that sound the same as or similar to
Freecycle, such as Phreecycle that I think someone mentioned.

I am not a lawyer, but I think in the UK it would be a breach of
trademark...

Jim

On 21 Oct 2020 at 22:11, Dave Wade wrote:

Jim,

Where I live, we have both Freecycle and Freegle. Freegle was started in the uk
because some folks didn't agree with some Freecycle policies. e.g. Living
Creatures are not allowed on Freecycle but they are and anything legal is OK on
Freegle. Whilst Freegle got off to good start it now seems to have withered and
almost died. I believe that both started by using Yahoo groups but now they have
their own dedicated systems. Freecycle is trademarked and groups have to be
properly affiliated and use the Freecycle systems, so I believe it is correct to
refuse to create groups with Freecycle in the name. I suspect existing groups
were migrated from the existing Yahoo groups but I am not sure why they haven't
been migrated to the Freecycle platform.

Not sure of your basis for saying Freegle groups are dwindling. I was moved
semi-automatically to Freegle, using my existing Freecycle login details, when
our local Freegle group started, but found the Freecycle group still remained
active. I find, though, that I still receive about ten times as many messages
from Freegle as I do from Freecycle.

Given the reasons behind the creating of Freegle I suspect some kind of
internal politics, but I am sure that Freecycle will claim "ownership" of
any group that purports to use part of its name and offer re-cycling
services.....

Yes, you're probably right there, but that clearly does not include Freegle. I
would have my doubts about names that sound the same as or similar to
Freecycle, such as Phreecycle that I think someone mentioned.

Jim

--
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 created a Premium Trial group (groups.io/g/ikc) on Sept 5 and a subgroup on Sept 8. The trial period has since ended but all Premium features have been retained and the subgroup is not locked.

FYI,
Bruce

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 04:11 PM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

Are you using infinite scroll?

Bruce; I suspect he is. I have just tried Infinite Scroll and got the same result that Jim reported. A test on "100" was OK.

Back to "20"...

Chris

On Thu, Oct 22, 2020 at 10:44 AM, Jim Wilson wrote:

I was looking at beta Topic "Free to Premium Expanse" and noticed messages after 26548 are missing the bottom menu bar.

Jim/Chris -- I'm not seeing this, either.

Are you using infinite scroll? It seems to be a problem child.

Bruce