Hi All,

I will go into the database and fix up subscriptions that have configurations that don't work. But I'm not sure which way to change things. Specifically, this is for subscriptions that are set to No Email or Special Notices Only and have a Message Selection setting not of All Messages.

Right now, these subscriptions are not getting messages from topics/hashtags they follow. And in the case of No Email, they're not getting any messages at all. Should I change their Email Delivery to Individual Messages? Or should I change their Message Selection to All Messages. I can see arguments for both.

Thanks,
Mark

On Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 02:11 PM, Mark Fletcher wrote:

The solution is to go into the database and fix existing subscriptions that have these configurations.

Mark,

Maybe I'm misunderstanding, but if by "fix existing subscriptions" you mean make the changes retroactive, I don't think it's a matter of that. Even after you fix existing subscriptions with the configuration I described, any member who is currently No Email could - even after you fix existing subscriptions - change to Following Only and I think you'd have the same problem. As I explained in the chronology, I was No Email before the changes, and I set myself to Following Only *after* the changes. But maybe I misunderstood.
 
--
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

saying that, what you are saying is no doubt true as well

ah, thanks for that...but it does seem to me more than just that.. As I said I send messages to myself and those that contained long lists of 'non-words' just vanished, yet all the others went through, so seems to be that spambot is rejecting certain messages and not others.

On Thu, Feb 11, 2021 at 07:05 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

if Email Delivery is set to `Special` or `No Email` and the Message Selection is changed from `All Messages`, we now force Email Delivery to `Individual Messages`.

I think I've finally located the bug I've been trying to decipher (and describe in a separate thread) for days. I believe there is a bug with the above and that this has nothing to do with the non-retroactivity. Here's the chronology.

In a certain group, in which I also happen to be a mod, I set myself to No Email in December, before these changes went into effect (this is in my activity log). Later, and I believe this was in early March, after the changes went into effect (it is not logged, but I remember why I wanted to start following messages there, and it had to do with something that occurred in early March), I set myself to Following Only. That was post-changes. So at that point, I believe the system tried, as described above by Mark, to force-set me to Individual Messages. But that seems not to have worked. I am marked Individual Messages in name only: on my Subscription page and my Member page (as seen by moderators). Whereas in the Member List (as seen by moderators) and in the My Groups page, I am still No Email. And that is the true setting, because I in fact receive no email.

So my hunch is that the force-setting to Individual Messages is failing.

The consequences of this bug are bad: namely, the member (in this case, me) has no way to receive emails from the group. The only thing the member can change is their subscription page, and that already looks correct. There's nothing left for them to change and they're basically stuck.

--
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 Mon, Mar 8, 2021 at 10:37 AM, Alexis wrote:

Bizarre thing is that it is not rejecting all messages.

That's probably because only one of the two mail servers was blocked. The same happened to my group member who was bouncing.
 
--
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 too have been having this happen to two of my email addresses, both using the same domain.
First one started over a week ago, the other yesterday,

Bizarre thing is that it is not rejecting all messages. The bulk that are rejected are emails containing lots of 'non-words', which is understandable, but some of those messages get through.

Then again, other 'normal' messages are sometimes being rejected but not always.

I have tested this by sending messages direct to those addresses, as well as via groups.io, so I presume my email provider uses spambot, which is a pain in the arse.

For what it may be worth, I think ALL server side spam filters are a bad idea. What one person may think is spam, another does not, and once you get on these blacklists it can be a pain to get off them, plus nothing is to stop you getting black listed again.
Personally I think all spam filtering should be done by the user.
As for groups.io, well it is a mailing group, and whilst I realise a lot of people read and post via a browser, it a MAILING group after all, so I am sure the majority of people read and post using their email software, so local spam filtering comes into play.

Just my penny's worth
Alexis

Which is the big problem with Spamcop. They are the ones who decide
what servers get put on their blocklists and they not only are
unwilling to tell you why but impossible to communicate with to get
blocks removed. It happens with my 1&1 SMP servers and my mail is
blocked for no fault of my own and no way to resolve it myself.

I commented earlier that I thought using Spamcop was a bad idea and we
can now see why.

Dave

On 7 Mar 2021 at 20:46, Mark Fletcher wrote:

We were apparently on the Spamcop blocklist earlier today for one of our
two mail servers. But we are not on it right now, and apparently there's
no way for me to get any information on why we were on it.

http://davesergeant.com

Currently when someone posts a followup to a moderated topic they receive a notice saying:

"Your message will be sent when it's approved by the moderators."

Typically this results in the poster assuming that they have been placed under moderation for some reason. It would be useful if the notice was more specific, indicating that the thread topic is under moderation, not the individual subscriber. Better yet would be a new Moderated Topic notice type which owners could customize and make active.

Drew

One of my group members is bouncing, with this message:
"neocat.org: 554 5.7.1 Service unavailable; Client host [66.175.222.108] blocked using bl.spamcop.net; Blocked - see https://www.spamcop.net/bl.shtml?66.175.222.108"
This happened to the same member once a couple of months ago, just for one message, but he's now completely blocked. He thinks his spamblocker has blacklisted groups.io, which sounds right ... ??
--
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

Unfortunately, though, No Emsil members won’t receive the warnings. And there’s nothing they can do to fix their No Email setting anyway, since the only place they can set it is in their subscription page and it looks like it is set correctly there to Individusl Email. I’m assuming that toggling it back and forth would work because the changes would then kick in, but I haven’t tried this yet in my own settings because I want to preserve the bug to show Mark.

--
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

Yes to all by Duane and Andy. There are hacks we can make and warnings we can give out until the bug - member-list email delivery does not match member-page email delivery - is fixed.

--
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 Sat, Mar 6, 2021 at 02:09 AM, J_Catlady wrote:

What does a mod do when they find a member who is No Email in the Member List but Individual Email in thei member page? And that’s sssuming they could even find all of them, which is not practical in large groups.

For your own groups I'd be inclined to send a message direct to all those on the membership list who have No Email set to get them to verify their settings. If you have alerted them to the possibility of an issue then it's up to them to check and be responsible for their own settings.

I still find it odd that there would be more than one location in the Groups.io database where the member delivery settings are held and that the subscription page would take information from one source and the membership list from another.  If that is the case, then it would also bring into question the validity of the data returned by the member info object in the API

Regards,
Andy

On Fri, Mar 5, 2021 at 08:09 PM, J_Catlady wrote:

it’s not realistic (or even possible) for mods to go through member lists and find the disconnecting variables and change them. What does a mod do when they find a member who is No Email in the Member List but Individual Email in thei member page?

If/when a member has a question about messages/delivery, I'll look into it and/or coach them.  Otherwise, I leave it up to the members to decide what settings they want.  With the fix in place, they won't be able to select conflicting settings, so there shouldn't be many questions/complaints.

Duane

Changes to the site this week:

March 5, 2021

• BUGFIX: Updated the invite and join group pages to reflect recent changes in the subscription settings. Discussion.

March 3, 2021

• CHANGE: Changed the color of the Owner link in the header of the photo album page to be white.
• BUGFIX: Fixed pricing displays for legacy groups in the Change Plan/Upgrade page. Discussion.
• NEW: Clicking on an Unsubscribe link for an email sent to an account that has been banned by Groups.io now displays a message saying the account has been disabled and explaining how the person may have received the unwanted email.

March 2, 2021

• CHANGE: In the Group Activity and Member Activity pages, changed the Today date range to Past 24 Hours, Within 7 Days to Past 7 Days, and Within 30 Days to Past 30 Days. Discussion.
• CHANGE: Recognize Réf: as a subject reply indicator. Discussion.
• BUGFIX: Don't use the word Update when viewing an event RSVP if the event doesn't allow additional guests. Discussion.
• BUGFIX: Button formatting fix. Discussion.
• CHANGE: Changed wording of email delivery and post status activity log entries. Discussion.
• BUGFIX: Don't convert parentheses to underscores in the preview slug in the uploader dialog. Discussion.
• CHANGE: Don't include the via Support tag in Banned by system activity messages. Discussion.
• CHANGE: Include the group subject tag in +owner subject lines. Discussion.

March 1, 2021

• CHANGE: In the edit photo album page, sort the members by email address.
• BUGFIX: Removed async/await references in Javascript so that older browsers will work again.

February 27, 2021

• BUGFIX: Fix some styling issues with the chat screen.
• CHANGE: Reverted the text field font size to standard Bootstrap sizes, removing a workaround for iOS mobile automatic text field zooming.

Take care everyone.

Mark