main@beta.groups.io

Re: questions

Mark Fletcher

#46

Hi Cherrill,

We support all the options that Y! Groups supports. So, you can have multiple moderators, with varying levels of permissions. You group can be listed or unlisted in the directory. Archives can be public or restricted to members only.

Hope this helps!

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

my co-owner and I have discussed opening a group here, but I have a few questions.

First off, I hope it is allowed to have 2 group owners.

We would like to open a group which is not private in that members have to be either added or sent an invite; but is closed so that people have to be a member to participate but can join by seeing the group name listed. We do not want people who are members of other .io groups but not members of our group to be able to see our messages.

I hope this makes sense, because i thought i had read something about people being able to share in interesting topics, and I am not sure I understand this concept.

thank you

Cherrill

Re: Business model changes

ro-esp

#47

What do you mean by "restricted groups"?

What are "integrations"?

Re: questions

Mark Fletcher

#48

Hi Bruce,

Good questions. As to whitelisting and spam, I'm been registering the Groups.io servers with the various whitelists for the major email providers. A good reputation takes time to develop, of course, but I'm doing everything I can to help that along. And part of that it reacting quickly when spam is reported.

Questions 3 and 4 are related. With groups.io, you can download your complete membership AND your complete message archive at any time. So, if groups..io does ever go away, you'll still have all that. Unfortunately, you can't do that at Yahoo or Google. (Through the Dropbox integration, you can also have all, or some, of the attachments sent through your group automatically stored in your Dropbox, as another way of archiving.)

As for longevity, I'll answer it this way. Groups.io is a passion project for me. I don't want to live in a world where Facebook groups are the main/best way to communicate in a group on-line. I believe email groups are fundamentally better for many types of communication. It's clear that groups are not a priority at either Yahoo or Google and I'm worried that email groups will disappear without a dedicated company/service providing them.

As for funding of the company, I'm committed to funding it for the foreseeable future.

The only question in my mind is whether groups.io will gain a critical mass of users (for some definition of critical). Much of that is on me, to provide a feature rich, easy to use service that people like. But it's also dependent on people liking and using the service and spreading the word.

I hope this answers your questions.

Thanks,

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 8:00 AM, Bruce Pappas <bruce@...> wrote:

I'm also interested in moving my groups here. A few questions:
1. What will you do to keep your list addresses white-listedf?
2. What will you do when spam is reported to you?
3. What about longevity? What will you do to make sure you don't just fly the coop when you want, leaving owners high and dry?
4. Can you download a list of members and messages for archival purposes?
Thanks.
-Bruce

_______________________________________________
Bruce Colglazier Pappas
Email: bruce@...
Phone: (H) 763-377-9874 - (C) 763-229-7075 - (F) 763-377-8189
Address: 20 Ardmore Dr, Minneapolis, MN 55422-5208 USA
Website: www.brucepappas.com
Skype: bruce.c.pappas

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:23 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:
my co-owner and I have discussed opening a group here, but I have a few questions.

First off, I hope it is allowed to have 2 group owners.

We would like to open a group which is not private in that members have to be either added or sent an invite; but is closed so that people have to be a member to participate but can join by seeing the group name listed. We do not want people who are members of other .io groups but not members of our group to be able to see our messages.

I hope this makes sense, because i thought i had read something about people being able to share in interesting topics, and I am not sure I understand this concept.

thank you

Cherrill

Re: Business model changes

Mark Fletcher

#49

Hi,

A restricted group is a group where members have to be approved before they can join the group.

An integration is a connection with another service. I admit it's a nerdy word. For example, you can integrate a blog with your group through the feed integration. All new blog posts will automatically be sent to the group. You can integrate an Instagram account with your group, so that whenever a photo is posted to the Instagram account, it'll be sent to your group.

I hope this helps. If you have any suggestions for how the terminology could be changed to be more easily understood, please share.

Thanks,

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:16 AM, <ro-esp@...> wrote:

What do you mean by "restricted groups"?

What are "integrations"?

Re: questions

Cherrill <cdjamieson@...>

#50

yes, thank you, this helps immensely.

now to think of a nice catchy intro to go with what we hope is a group name that will draw members.

Cherrill

Show quoted text

On Oct 12, 2014, at 9:55 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Hi Cherrill,

We support all the options that Y! Groups supports. So, you can have multiple moderators, with varying levels of permissions. You group can be listed or unlisted in the directory. Archives can be public or restricted to members only.

Hope this helps!

Mark

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 7:23 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

my co-owner and I have discussed opening a group here, but I have a few questions.

First off, I hope it is allowed to have 2 group owners.

We would like to open a group which is not private in that members have to be either added or sent an invite; but is closed so that people have to be a member to participate but can join by seeing the group name listed. We do not want people who are members of other .io groups but not members of our group to be able to see our messages.

I hope this makes sense, because i thought i had read something about people being able to share in interesting topics, and I am not sure I understand this concept.

thank you

Cherrill

Re: Join flow

Mark Fletcher

#51

Hi Shal,

How about:

"To join any groups you must log in below. If you haven't already registered with Groups.io you can register now by entering your email address below and choosing a new password that you will use to log in to Groups.io."

Good suggestion. I've made the change.

2) Very clever that you apparently picked up my "Full name" from the Display name field of the confirmation email sent back during registration. This item started out as noticing that there was no place on the Join form to enter my screen name.

Thanks. :) Any time a message is sent to us from a user without the full name field set, we try to set it from the email.

Mark

trimming and e-mail

ro-esp

#52

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: trimming and e-mail

Cherrill <cdjamieson@...>

#53

if I am understanding this correctly, I would not want anything deleted. That is up to the group members if that is a rule of the group; which it is in a lot of canine/feline health groups, but isn’t in just chatty groups

Cherrill

Show quoted text

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:34 AM, ro-esp@... wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: Invite flow

Mark Fletcher

#54

Hi Shal,

On Sat, Oct 11, 2014 at 5:38 PM, Shal Farley <shal@...> wrote:

1) The Email address box could parse these as equivalent:

Display Name <email@...>
email@...

Currently it rejects the first with
"Display Name <email@...>: Invalid email address "

Better, it could take "Display Name" as the tentative name of the member, confirmed or overridden when the member responds to the invitation..

Excellent idea. It's on the TODO list.

2) The Invite Message box looks like a plain text entry box. When I put simple HTML code in it I saw the literal code, as if editing in a plain-text entry form.

However, that code controlled the formatting inside the invitation email. Apparently the handling of that text is HTML-aware in at least some sense, as the text/plain message body of the invite had the HTML tags stripped, whereas the text/HTML part retained my coding. I had expected the opposite: the text/plain would show exactly what I typed and the text/HTML would have the tags escaped so as to show as plain text.

I don't suggest that the processing be changed to match my expectation, rather add a hint somewhere to the invite form that lets the user know that (at least limited) HTML is ok in the Invite Message. Or perhaps better still, make that an HTML edit control like the Post composition window.

Hmm. I'm a little surprised that the HTML wasn't escaped in the message itself. Anyways, the text box should be HTML and you should be able to enter HTML in the invite message. I've put it on the TODO list.

3) This is an edge case, but in testing I invited an address, accepted via email, then removed that new member. A second attempt to invite the address gave me the error "Already invited". Sure enough, the address still showed on the "Outstanding Invitations" tab, but if I hadn't thought to look there I wouldn't have known what to do.

I'm not sure whether there's an action item here or not. It is tempting to suggest that the member should be removed from the Outstanding Invitations list if they leave or are removed from the group. But since "Send Again" is an action in that list I don't know if that is necessary.

Right, I'm not sure the best way to handle this. Right now, invites stick around forever, regardless of what the invitee does. Rescinding the invitation just deletes the invite record from the database, it doesn't affect the invitee's subscription, if there is one. So the moderator can 'maintain' the invite list this way. But perhaps some automation would help.

4) The "Send Again" item does not appear to work. It unchecked the box but gave no other indication of sending another invitation. Nor was another received. Probably related to the above edge case. The "Rescind Invitation" action removed that address from the list and allowed me to send a new invitation.

Ugh. I looked the code, and found the following:

case "again":

// send it again. TODO

So it does nothing right now. Oops. Sigh.

5) The "Password" lacks a second box to confirm the password. Oops?

Clicking on "Accept Invitation" in the invitation email brings me to a Join Group page that asks only that I set a Password and select the Email Delivery. Does the Password need a confirmation box?

Maybe. I guess the password reset mechanism is an adequate backstop for the (hopefully rare) case of a mistyped password. After all, who doesn't use a password manager these days? It just runs counter to experience, so it seems odd.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't ask to verify email addresses either. A friend of mine who is in user interface thinks I'm crazy for not asking for verification. But I hate having to type everything in twice. What do you think?

I will fix the invite issues this week.

Thanks,

Mark

Re: trimming and e-mail

Mark Fletcher

#55

Hi Ronaldo,

Figuring out what's quoted and what isn't is a very tricky thing to do programmatically, because there are so many different ways of indicating quoting. What we try to do right now is only collapse a quoted part of a message if there's only one quoted part of the message, and if the quoted part falls at the end of the message. It's more tricky if it's an HTML message, and we're not as good at it as I'd like, but that's the goal.

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:34 AM, <ro-esp@...> wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: trimming and e-mail

Mark Fletcher

#56

Cherrill,

Ronaldo was just asking about how the messages are displayed in the archives. We don't delete anything. And the quoted parts are just collapsed (not shown). You can click a button and they'll show up. It's just to try to make the archives easier to read.

Hope this helps.

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

if I am understanding this correctly, I would not want anything deleted. That is up to the group members if that is a rule of the group; which it is in a lot of canine/feline health groups, but isn’t in just chatty groups

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:34 AM, ro-esp@... wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: trimming and e-mail

Cherrill <cdjamieson@...>

#57

okay, sorry for all the questions.

so many of the emails are totally foreign to me; I have no idea what most of the words mean, but I guess I will learn. My groups are mostly just fun stuff.

Cherrill

Show quoted text

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Cherrill,

Ronaldo was just asking about how the messages are displayed in the archives. We don't delete anything. And the quoted parts are just collapsed (not shown). You can click a button and they'll show up. It's just to try to make the archives easier to read.

Hope this helps.

Mark

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

if I am understanding this correctly, I would not want anything deleted. That is up to the group members if that is a rule of the group; which it is in a lot of canine/feline health groups, but isn’t in just chatty groups

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:34 AM, ro-esp@... wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: trimming and e-mail

Mark Fletcher

#58

No problem at all! If you come across terms you don't know or have suggestions for how we can make the site easier to understand, please say so. I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot that can be done to make the site easier to understand.

Thanks,

Mark

Show quoted text

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

okay, sorry for all the questions.
so many of the emails are totally foreign to me; I have no idea what most of the words mean, but I guess I will learn. My groups are mostly just fun stuff.

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Cherrill,

Ronaldo was just asking about how the messages are displayed in the archives. We don't delete anything. And the quoted parts are just collapsed (not shown).. You can click a button and they'll show up. It's just to try to make the archives easier to read.

Hope this helps.
Mark

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:
if I am understanding this correctly, I would not want anything deleted. That is up to the group members if that is a rule of the group; which it is in a lot of canine/feline health groups, but isn’t in just chatty groups

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:34 AM, ro-esp@... wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: trimming and e-mail

Cherrill <cdjamieson@...>

#59

oh good, I thought you were sort of hoping I would just go back to getting the turkey ready for the oven and shut up, lol,

hopefully by the end of the day I will have our group opened and then I may have more questions.

thanks

Cherrill

I've learned that being kind is more important than being right.

Show quoted text

On Oct 12, 2014, at 11:27 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

No problem at all! If you come across terms you don't know or have suggestions for how we can make the site easier to understand, please say so. I'll be the first to admit that there's a lot that can be done to make the site easier to understand.

Thanks,

Mark

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 10:01 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:

okay, sorry for all the questions.
so many of the emails are totally foreign to me; I have no idea what most of the words mean, but I guess I will learn. My groups are mostly just fun stuff.

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:58 AM, Mark Fletcher <markf@corp.groups.io> wrote:

Cherrill,

Ronaldo was just asking about how the messages are displayed in the archives. We don't delete anything. And the quoted parts are just collapsed (not shown).. You can click a button and they'll show up. It's just to try to make the archives easier to read.

Hope this helps.
Mark

On Sun, Oct 12, 2014 at 9:48 AM, Cherrill <cdjamieson@...> wrote:
if I am understanding this correctly, I would not want anything deleted. That is up to the group members if that is a rule of the group; which it is in a lot of canine/feline health groups, but isn’t in just chatty groups

Cherrill

On Oct 12, 2014, at 10:34 AM, ro-esp@... wrote:

Hi, I'm new here.

the archive looks pretty "clean", but how does it work in email? Is there an option to use the traditional interspersing quoting ( http://www.learn.to/quote )? Is there an autotrim-feature like on googlegroups (the only "edge" googlegroups has IMHO), that deletes everything under the last unindented line?

Are messages sorted according to subjectline? does the system assign a new thread to a message that has the subjectline changed?
groetjes, Ronaldo

Re: Invite flow

Shal Farley

#60

Mark,

2) The Invite Message box looks like a plain text entry box.
...Hmm. I'm a little surprised that the HTML wasn't escaped in the message 
itself. Anyways, the text box should be HTML and you should be able to 
enter HTML in the invite message. I've put it on the TODO list.As long as there's some constraint in what the devious or criminally minded can do with the HTML. The iframe and script tags once bedeviled Yahoo Groups home pages (and Messages archives) until Y!Groups implemented a whitelist of "safe" tags. But that was in simpler times, I don't know what they do now.

Yeah, I'm not sure. I don't ask to verify email addresses either. A 
friend of mine who is in user interface thinks I'm crazy for not asking 
for verification. But I hate having to type everything in twice. What do 
you think?Having done it a few times on your site now I'm kind of with you on that. And I've always chuckled to myself as I paste a freshly generated password into both boxes on conventional sign-up forms - that doesn't really confirm anything so the purpose was lost.

On the other hand, my initial reaction tells me that your friend has a point. A Confirmation entry box is a familiar clue to the user that this is a place to register a new password. Right now the invite landing page says: 

"Enter A Password For Your Groups.io Account". 

The use of "A" instead of "The" is a pretty subtle clue. Perhaps it could say:

"Choose a new password to create your Groups.io account"

That's even more explicit than a Confirmation box. I'm being a little subtle too: I refer to "new password" here (and in join) to reinforce the idea that the user shouldn't re-use a password they're using elsewhere. 

The other reason to have a Confirmation box is that the small bother now may avoid a larger inconvenience (or other cost) associated with correcting it later if you get it wrong. But I think your password reset mechanism (having now been through it too) is facile enough to eliminate this concern.

-- Shal

Re: Join flow

David P. Dillard

#62

I just created a group and these groups do look great, I hope to be sending a message soon and will see how the service is working.
Thanks so much for putting this all together.  Can one imagine hearing from the owner of Google or of Yahoo to regularly interact regarding how the groups are going and what is being done with them?




Sincerely,
David Dillard
Temple University
(215) 204 - 4584
jwne@temple.edu

Show quoted text

On Sun, 12 Oct 2014, Mark Fletcher wrote:

Hi Shal,
      How about:

      "To join any groups you must log in below. If you haven't already registered with Groups.io you can register now by
      entering your email address below and choosing a new password that you will use to log in to Groups.io."
Good suggestion. I've made the change.
 
      2) Very clever that you apparently picked up my "Full name" from the Display name field of the confirmation email sent
      back during registration. This item started out as noticing that there was no place on the Join form to enter my screen
      name.
Thanks. :) Any time a message is sent to us from a user without the full name field set, we try to set it from the email.
Mark 
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A suggestion...

Steve

#63

So I'm in the kick the tire stage. My Yahoo group has about 1700 folks,
and I suspect that the free version is probably adequate. One obstacle is
getting all those members over to the new site without going the invite
option. I understand your premium version permits that, eg direct
insertion of membership. For us, that is a one time event/need. So to
induce groups to move over to yours without having to go through the invite
hassle, why not offer a one time fee OR free window time period, to transfer their membership?

I suspect many groups with minimal needs, would find the offer very
attractive as an easy way to migrate their group.

Separately, i tried to post this here via email, and it came back as undeliverable.

Just a suggestion.

Well...

Steve

#64

So I created a group, put up a post without a hashtag (in my settings I said one was required), and hit post, etc. I thought it posted.
Then I get an email saying I didn't include a hashtag and gives me a link. That's sorta weird that I have to wait till I get an email back to tell me no hashtag was included...
I click on the link, and it doesn't allow me to EDIT the post to add the hashtag.
Also, I'm getting weird action when I try and add a new line that has spaces between the lines.

Re: A suggestion...

Shal Farley

#65

butterandpeanuts,

I understand your premium version permits that, eg direct insertion of 
membership.  For us, that is a one time event/need.  So to induce groups 
to move over to yours without having to go through the invite hassle, 
why not offer a one time fee OR free window time period, to transfer 
their membership?Done and did. See:
https://groups.io/org/groupsio/beta/thread/pricing_changes/1595

I had the same question and Mark provided a solution. A "group transfer" plan: one-time $10 fee.

-- Shal

Re: trimming and e-mail

Laurence Taylor

#66

On 12/10/2014 17:57, Mark Fletcher wrote:
Hi Ronaldo,

Figuring out what's quoted and what isn't is a very tricky thing to do
programmatically, because there are so many different ways of indicating
quoting. What we try to do right now is only collapse a quoted part of a
message if there's only one quoted part of the message, and if the quoted
part falls at the end of the message. It's more tricky if it's an HTML
message, and we're not as good at it as I'd like, but that's the goal.On that subject, is it possible to send plain text messages (no MIME
codes, no odd symbles, just good old 7-bit, like this one is) and have
them pass through unmolested?

Also, what happens if someone sends something written in HTML? Does your
system try to extract the text, or is it left up to the recipient's mail
reader?


-- 
rgds
LAurence