Yesterday I was directed to a group on groupspaces, but that service seems to have shut down. Thinking it might have moved to groups.io I tried the search, and found 26 alphabetical lists, some of them containing well over a thousand groups...with numbered pages. It would be nice to be able to narrow it down by *letters*, so you won't have to guess where a group is listed if you know more than one letters that the name starts with.


Another idea is to list by language. Even having a choice between seeing "all-english", "partly english" and "non-english" groups would help a lot

groetjes/ĝis, Ronaldo

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 12:35 PM, Andy wrote:

Q:  If a moderator has enough privileges to remove an owner, does that also give them the power to promote someone to owner?

No. That was changed last year (after a few false starts). 

https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/71147681 

Regards,
Bruce

When I wrote the owner, I referred to the owner in question.

It makes sense that a moderator can't remove the last owner if as a rule there must always be at least one owner.

Q:  If a moderator has enough privileges to remove an owner, does that also give them the power to promote someone to owner?  (I think not, based on limited past experience.)

Andy

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 10:22 AM, Andy wrote:

If the owner's account has become compromised, or if the owner's intentions became devious, it might be better for moderators to step in and remove the owner.

I think that's a whole different situation since a mod can't remove the last owner.  BTW, I notice that you and some others refer to the owner when it's possible to have more than one.  If there's only one, a mod couldn't remove them anyway.

Duane

On Sat, Nov 6, 2021 at 11:09 AM, Duane wrote:

...  However, I still think it's a #bug that they can remove ANY owner.

In some cases, it might be desired.  If the owner's account has become compromised, or if the owner's intentions became devious, it might be better for moderators to step in and remove the owner.  If it's a free group, Mark might not intervene to help you.

At some point, you have to trust someone.

A moderator who has all privileges should be someone who can be trusted.  She/he was given all the keys.  If you didn't want that, don't hand them the keys.

Andy

On Fri, Nov 5, 2021 at 09:00 AM, Duane wrote:

I didn't try it with the last owner

I created a test group this morning specifically to check into this.  A mod with all permissions CAN NOT remove the LAST owner.  This would allow the remaining owner to take care of the problem - demote that mod and reinstate other owners - though it could be a bit time consuming.  However, I still think it's a #bug that they can remove ANY owner.

Thanks,
Duane

Changes to the site this week:

November 4, 2021:

• CHANGE: When going to a chat, we no longer scroll to the latest message. We return you to the last message you read, and pop up an unread counter/scroll to latest arrow button.

November 3, 2021:

• BUGFIX: The Database Import button was not functional if there were no existing database tables.
• BUGFIX: The chat member display dialog would only display one member of the chat.
• CHANGES: Changes to the chat window formatting, including: increasing the size of the chat window, aligning the buttons at the bottom, and preventing the window from horizontal scrolling.

November 2, 2021:

• BUGFIX: Chat messages with long lines (like URLs), would cause the App/Mobile site to horizontally scroll.
• BUGFIX: Exporting a group with many subgroups could lock many activity database rows, causing a cascading effect resulting in all activity database connections to be exhausted, resulting in timeouts on the website and other services and some activity log entries not being saved.

The next #changelog will be sent on Friday, November 12th.

Take care everyone.

Mark

I’ve already suggested that as a mod permission. 

--
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, Nov 5, 2021 at 05:15 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

One of the mods in MY block group, OTOH, is actually malicious…but I’m stuck with her and can just use Moderated

Ah... interesting. In your case the solution might be an additional per moderator permission: Allow to post to Locked Topic. 

Wouldn't help Bruce though.

Chris

True but Bruce said they’re just unaware, not malicious. (One of the mods in MY block group, OTOH, is actually malicious…but I’m stuck with her and can just use Moderated, and she’s not a co-owner.) I doubt Bruce’s co-owners would even know how to un-disable it, or go to the trouble if they did.

--
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, Nov 5, 2021 at 04:48 PM, Bruce Bowman wrote:

Two of the worst offenders are co-Owners, not Moderators.

Would that not mean that they could disable the disable function as and when the mood suited them? Once that they had found it, that is...

The additional function would seem to be immediately vulnerable to being subverted.

Chris.

Agreed. A disable option works for your case. For my case, I can stick with setting the topic to moderated. 

--
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 Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 10:56 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

My conclusion from this experience is that my preference would be to make "Post to locked topics" a mod permission. It solves Bruce's problem without the need for (1) a fix to the "moderate-first-message in a topic that doesn't exist yet" bug (I'm still calling it a bug) and (2) the need for group owners to understand the esoteric process of putting a locked topic on moderation in order to control posts to it by other mods.

Well, I feel obligated to violate my own rule not to post to this thread again.

The proposal above doesn't really solve my problem. Two of the worst offenders are co-Owners, not Moderators. One of them is the President of the parent organization. Making this a Moderator permission would not head them off. And as previously stated, I don't want to start moderating posts that should have been bounced in the first place.

I've considered this carefully, and from where I stand, disabling this via a Message Policy checkbox is the only way to go. But obviously, I've lived with it this long, so it can't be causing me terrible hardship. No one on my end is being malicious, they simply aren't thinking about it. If the proposal never gets any traction, so be it.

Regards,
Bruce

Since this just came up in docs, I want to add here a point I made there but did not sufficiently emphasize here: If a hashtag marked "Locked" is applied to a topic on topic creation, only the replies are locked (i.e., bounce), which is correct behavior. Because imagine what would happen if Locked behaved the same way as Moderated currently does, namely, if it applied even to the first message. In that case the first message itself would bounce, locking even the topic itself out of existence.  You couldn't even create the topic. So at minimum, the behavior of a hashtag with these two attributes is inconsistent.

I understand that people have been exploiting this bug (or feature, if they prefer) to restrict use of certain hashtags. But I don't think that's the way to do it. And if the behavior stays as is, it certainly needs to be clearly documented, because I find it totally unintuitive.
--
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

While doing some testing for a topic on GMF, I came across a glitch that seems to be very important.  A moderator can't demote an owner, nor promote someone to owner.  However, in this test case, a moderator with all permissions was able to remove an owner's membership from the group.  In at least 2 locations, the membership overview and the individual member record, the Remove function allows an owner to be removed.  I didn't try it with the last owner, but I don't think a mod should be allowed to remove an owner at all.

Thanks,
Duane

While doing some testing for a topic on GMF, I came across a glitch that seems to be very important.  A moderator can't demote an owner, nor promote someone to owner.  However, in this test case, a moderator with all permissions was able to remove an owner's membership from the group.  In at least 2 locations, the membership overview and the individual member record, the Remove function allows an owner to be removed.  I didn't try it with the last owner, but I don't think a mod should be allowed to remove an owner at all.

Thanks,
Duane

As I mentioned, this was heavily debated and fought fir years ago, and Mark decided to allow it, I still think that was the right decision, and even Mark takes advantage of the increased convenience. Please let’s not go through that all over again. 

--
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 Thu, Nov 4, 2021 at 02:56 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

My conclusion from this experience

My own conclusion is that allowing mods to post to locked topics has now created the need or desire for further changes to work around the issues created by the original change. If a locked topic was treated as such then it would be simpler all round.  If a Mod wants to post to a locked topic, then unlock it, post and lock it again.

Andy

My conclusion from this experience is that my preference would be to make "Post to locked topics" a mod permission. It solves Bruce's problem without the need for (1) a fix to the "moderate-first-message in a topic that doesn't exist yet" bug (I'm still calling it a bug) and (2) the need for group owners to understand the esoteric process of putting a locked topic on moderation in order to control posts to it by other mods.
--
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, Nov 3, 2021 at 07:58 PM, Andrea McGhee wrote:

My members have reported that they never received an acknowledgment for receipt or a sponsorship on groups.io.

I'm sure that an acknowledgment/receipt to the member for sponsorship or a donation would be appreciated.  In the meantime, any member, once signed in to the site, can go to https://groups.io/account?page=billing to see a summary of any payments they've made.  This is covered in the Members Manual, https://groups.io/helpcenter/membersmanual/1/sponsoring-groups-to-help-cover-their-hosting.

Duane