For general Groups.io questions, please see the Group Managers Forum and Group_Help groups. Note: those groups are volunteer-led and are not officially run by Groups.io.
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Re: Site updates
#changelog
With a screen reader, I can no longer find that side menu when visiting a groups page. Did that change as well? How can I get to settings, and admin controls if that sidebar list of items is no longer present?
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Bob Bellizzi
"it's too much effort." Therein lies the problem; how important to you is the group if it's too much trouble for you to manage it? Bob Bellizzi
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Henning Schulzrinne
I help run a community mailing list with about 1,300 members. We don't moderate posts except for new members - just too much effort. (We do time-out members who don't abide by the rules.) We have a "three posts per day" rule for all the reasons mentioned. It would be really helpful to have a very simple auto-moderation mechanism, where the excess post would be rejected with a suitable message. There's no need for complex rules or behaviors - if the topic is still relevant a day later, the person can send their message then. We suspend the rule, by announcement, during emergency situations like after a hurricane. In general, I think simplicity wins here - you want something straightforward that allows lightly-moderated groups to function better. Even without an automated mechanism, most of the active posters have internalized the 3-post rule, so there are no great surprises.
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Bob Bellizzi
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 10:26 AM, Andy Wedge wrote:
If a Moderator is unable or unwilling to do that then they probably have the wrong job.Amen, Andy. We have a group currently passing through the 3300's which has been growing constantly for over 20 years. Technically we have about 8 Moderators, but we have a hierachial Moderator system and major issues percolate to the top (me) which is where they should be resolved. It it seems like too much work, it's likely the wrong job for you. -- Bob Bellizzi
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Jim F.
Mark-
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
For what it's worth, as the original proposer, I would now view this suggestion as having three separate versions or options: First is a moderation option that would automatically place a member account on some stricter type of moderation if there are X posts within P time period (say 15 posts in a week), and then automatically revert back to the original status at the end of that time period. This would automate, and so make far more convenient, something that would now take a lot of monitoring and followup. Second is a moderation option that, once triggered as above (or manually), would limit the member account to Y posts within Q time period (say 2 posts per day). Excess posts within the window could either require moderator approval or simply be rejected. This again would automate (particularly the rejection option) something that would now take a lot of monitoring. Third is a moderation option to delay, and possibly consolidate, such excess posts. These three options could be implemented together or separately. Having all three together would be ideal, but either one of the first two would provide most of the functionality even by itself (so long as the threshold number and time period ranges were broad enough). The third option, on the other hand, seems like merely a tweak to the second one; it doesn't strike me as a priority, particularly if it could be hard to implement. Best regards. -Jim
On Jan 22, 2022, at 3:58 PM, Marv Waschke <marvwaschke@...> wrote: Long ago, when I was developing network management tools, our team implemented a rule like this in an agent for processing alerts-- x identical alerts within y time consolidated to a single alert. Worked fairly well. The logs became easier to read, enterprise-wide alert traffic went down. I can see similar benefits to groups.io. However, some difficult bugs surfaced a few years out when the alert traffic was higher than we ever imagined and some unanticipated race conditions surfaced. These took serious effort to fix, more than the original implementation. My intuition, which really isn't worth much, is that implementing something similar in groups.io might surface similar issues. I would keep that in mind when deciding whether to implement or not, especially because a theme among the comments here is that this is a technical solution to a problem that might better be solved by addressing the human dynamics in a groups. Just thoughts, Marv
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Long ago, when I was developing network management tools, our team implemented a rule like this in an agent for processing alerts-- x identical alerts within y time consolidated to a single alert. Worked fairly well. The logs became easier to read, enterprise-wide alert traffic went down. I can see similar benefits to groups.io.
However, some difficult bugs surfaced a few years out when the alert traffic was higher than we ever imagined and some unanticipated race conditions surfaced. These took serious effort to fix, more than the original implementation. My intuition, which really isn't worth much, is that implementing something similar in groups.io might surface similar issues. I would keep that in mind when deciding whether to implement or not, especially because a theme among the comments here is that this is a technical solution to a problem that might better be solved by addressing the human dynamics in a groups. Just thoughts, Marv
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Site updates
#changelog
Changes to the site this week: January 21, 2022:
January 18, 2022:
The next #changelog will be published on Friday, January 28th. Take care everyone. Mark
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Re: #suggestion Need a way to disable the option for members to subscribe to only special messages
#suggestion
hello,
As a long time (25+ years) group/ email admin etc. I consider this suggestion that only panders to 'wants' and ignores needs very unfortunate. >>Why? Why does it have to still be there, in the case (as with the OP) where they plan to send no special notices anyway?<< -Because there has to be an override possibility for Admins/ Owners to contact people, regardless of their day to day wishes. -Because it is an administrative function, and one day someone will find a need to use it. -Because [many] people like me whose preference IS NO MAIL, read the damn groups on line and avoid all these hassles that others enjoy being tangled up in. -SO I do not miss out on others email at all, whether admin notices or irrelevant topics. -Hen-pecking at 'features' that otherwise have little impact isn't particularly use of productive time. But when needed, you will welcome the 'freedom to use' the option. I for one do not support or encourage any such change. thanks dave
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 06:00 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
I have thought about in the past offering some sort of function to set specific members, or to have a group policy in general, that if multiple messages from the same person to the same topic occur within N minutes, without any intervening posts from others, to automatically combine those into one message.I'm not sure how that would work without introducing the equivalent of the notification combiner which delays the issuing of messages. Personally, I find that combiner frustrating, especially when testing features. I would personally set that as a group policy for beta, for example. Would something like that be useful to anyone else (other than the original poster)?It's not something I would like to see. If someone is posting too many messages to a group, there are other Moderator options to deal with that. If a Moderator is unable or unwilling to do that then they probably have the wrong job. Regards Andy
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Re: Pop up a banner when user attempts to upload to over-quota group
#suggestion
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 06:08 PM, Andy wrote:
does it also send a message to the moderators to let them know that an upload attempt failed and they must intervene?There's already a Moderator notification for when storage limits are reached. Regards Andy
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Re: Pop up a banner when user attempts to upload to over-quota group
#suggestion
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 01:08 PM, Andy wrote:
The banner might also show how to contact the group's moderators, since the person who sees this has little or no control over freeing up space.I agree that a mailto: link to the +owner address might be helpful here. Keep in mind that individual members can still delete some of their own content, and free up space that way. It isn't always necessary for a group administrator to intervene. Regards, Bruce
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Re: Pop up a banner when user attempts to upload to over-quota group
#suggestion
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 12:51 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
This is what's shown now in Files (and a similar one in Photos).Thanks Mark. I was originally thinking along the lines of a banner notice, but I like the alert box better. Regards, Bruce
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Re: Pop up a banner when user attempts to upload to over-quota group
#suggestion
Andy
Looks good. The banner might also show how to contact the group's moderators, since the person who sees this has little or no control over freeing up space.
Speaking of which, does it also send a message to the moderators to let them know that an upload attempt failed and they must intervene? Even better, maybe, it could have a button to bring the member directly to editing a message addressed to groupname+owner@groups.io, partially filled-in about the lack of space. OK, maybe too much. Andy
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
I say ‘YES’ for my group.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Anything to help keep multiple thread posts together would be helpful. Thanks.
On Jan 21, 2022, at 13:00, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:
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Re: #suggestion to facilitate ease of contacting specific members
#suggestion
On Fri, Jan 21, 2022 at 11:56 AM, Mark Fletcher wrote:
Perhaps a better solution is a way to tie a database row to a given group member, then we could offer some sort of contact ability.I believe that would be the better option since it would follow the existing convention of allowing messages only to group members as Andy mentioned. Duane
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Re: Posting Limits
#suggestion
Hi All, I appreciate the conversation. I have thought about in the past offering some sort of function to set specific members, or to have a group policy in general, that if multiple messages from the same person to the same topic occur within N minutes, without any intervening posts from others, to automatically combine those into one message. I would personally set that as a group policy for beta, for example. Would something like that be useful to anyone else (other than the original poster)? Thanks, Mark
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Re: #suggestion to facilitate ease of contacting specific members
#suggestion
Hi, Thanks for the suggestion, but I don't think it makes sense right now. Perhaps if we had a dedicated Email column type, but otherwise I'd have to figure out if a given text cell is an email address or not, and the option would have to be offered for all tables, even with ones without email addresses in them. Perhaps a better solution is a way to tie a database row to a given group member, then we could offer some sort of contact ability. But not for random email addresses. Thanks, Mark
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Re: Pop up a banner when user attempts to upload to over-quota group
#suggestion
On Thu, Jan 20, 2022 at 7:41 AM Bruce Bowman <bruce.bowman@...> wrote: When a group has exceeded its storage allocation, clicking a photo or file upload button silently fails to work. It would be better if a banner popped up explaining why. Good idea. This is what's shown now in Files (and a similar one in Photos).  Thanks, Mark
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Hello, In the Files section, if you do not have permission to upload files, the `New/Upload` dropdown no longer appears. Thanks, Mark
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Re: #suggestion Need a way to disable the option for members to subscribe to only special messages
#suggestion
Malcolm Austen
On Fri, 21 Jan 2022 17:26:47 -0000, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:
I appreciated the discussion about this. I'm not going to add this feature, at least at this time. It was mentioned up thread about going on vacation, and perhaps that's a setting to explore in the future. A thought for the future Mark, as and when you do introduce a vacation option. Can you please allow a time period to be specified - e.g "on vacation for three weeks". My past experience of telling people how to go to nomail (in mailman) is that they tend to forget to ever turn it back on and three months later ask whether the list is working :-( Ta, Malcolm. -- Malcolm Austen - email: malcolm.austen@...
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