Sadly that may well be true. Jim F: in a post earlier today you wrote It seems harsher on the posters, who would not even know that their posts aren't getting through. Why do you seem to consider

Barbel- Thanks. Yes, that is what I think is happening. But while I would be willing to upset those two members (and have), I'm not the 'owner' (in a broad sense) of the group (which existed long

IMHO, this has nothing to do with "hard questions." It's about having guidelines, deciding to enforce them, and sticking to it to change behavior. If you're unwilling or unable to do that, then your

Jim, It is a very difficult situation you find yourself in. From experience I can tell you that you might just have to risk upsetting those 2 members or risk losing the group. Thinking of many years

Andy- << I come back to my original thought that you have plenty of existing tools to control the situation but you are choosing not to use them. >> Muting topics wouldn't help both because people DO

Even if muting could be reasonably accomplished (and I have my doubts), that would put the burden of the few (the bad actors) on the many (their recipients). Why not set the bad actors to "can't

Tommy- Exactly. Best regards. -Jim

Bruce- Individual muting would work. It seems harsher on the posters, who would not even know that their posts aren't getting through. And you would need an easy way to unmute them (an 'unmute all'

I agree, seventy plus messages from two members is too much. Right now, the only way to mute them that I know of would be to moderate them and choose 'not allowed to post.' The only other solution

And then could elect to 'unfollow' when it gets to be a problem for them. Duane

If too many messages from one or two people is driving other subscribers away, delaying their posts and delivering them in a bolus doesn't seem like a solution. The annoying people are still posting

Oops, "Private" reply didn't work. Message was deleted, but already broadcast via email.

So your suggested change is to satisfy the needs of just over 20 members. Is there any reason why they can't mute topics or change their subscription to Following Only with First Message Also? That

I think "impersonal" would be worse. They'd be screaming to you offlist about it - "what happened?" "why am I being blocked?" etc. In the past I've trtied to avoid the hard conversations by setting up

John and Paul- Thanks for the inspirational talk, but that's not how our group works. Maybe it's because we began with in-person meetings (and still have video meetings). In any case, I didn't make

Tommy- Also, the group has about 250 members who receive special notices from the moderators, but only a couple dozen are subscribed to receive email distributions of member posts. It was more in the

Paul Gray. You speak absolute sense. If you run a group you take on the resp[onsibility over what is published irrespective of legal requirements that vary across borders anyway. Its that lack of

Duane- That's a bit of a chicken and egg problem. As I said, we've already been through some acrimony, which itself drove some people away, and all we got were some vague promises that were not then

Tommy- We choose a new topic every two weeks with the online discussion leading up to a video meeting (although the two excessive posters don't attend the meeting). For our last three topics the

In all things, there's one thing to remember: you are the Moderator, essentially the police officer of your Group. If you are the Group Owner, you have the final say in all matters pertaining to the