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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
J, This creates a direct connection between a specific group, on the one hand, and a member having, or wanting, to get a paid membership, on the other. And this is what I mean by the space warping around groups. Perhaps the gravity of the situation could be mitigated by the wording of the notice. It could say that unfortunately that group has no free slots available, but you can purchase a pass to join any group, including that one, ... I think that's better than simply telling them "you cannot join because the group is full" and then letting them figure out how to contact someone, or if they should even bother. That's not just a warp, that's a brick wall*. Any response that suggests that they contact the group's owner would create a lot of extra work for the owner, which I I would rather avoid.
So? Neither member would be aware of how the other got into the group, unless they got into gossiping. Yes, I understand the problem that some members might think that they've got stars upon thars, but the moral of that particular story is that there really isn't a difference. Nor is it a problem really if everyone decides to buy themselves a star - more money for the guy with the star machine (whether that be the group owner, or Mark, depending on what someone thinks is a star). Shal *A conceptual relative to a black hole, except it keeps you out instead of keeping you in.
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Re: Member Page is Blank for Moderators?
#bug
I just confirmed this bug by going into a group where I'm a mod but not an owner.
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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banned spamming email address attempted message logged as coming from "unconfirmed member"
#bug
A couple of days ago, my group logged an obviously spam attempted message from nonmember email address X. I immediately banned the address.
This morning there was another log entry from the same address, this time logged as from "unconfirmed member x." The email address has an NC in the banned member list but this is not an "unconfirmed member," it's a banned email address. The term "unconfirmed member" really threw me at first and I started looking through the pending member list. So hopefully this can be changed to log as "message from banned email address" or something like that. -- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Mobile/desktop menu flip
#bug
I've noticed today that my display flips to the mobile "hamburger" menus at a screen width below around 1237 pixels (100% zoom). Could have sworn that number was considerably lower not too long ago.
Is this a recent change...and if so, was it intentional? Thanks, Bruce
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
And on top of that, their neighbor in the next seat might have gotten in free.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Jan 12, 2021, at 12:38 PM, J_Catlady via groups.io <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Shal,
Here is the connection between member payment and specific group - from Mark's original message in this thread: "Once the free member slots are filled up, someone wishing to be a new member of the group would have to pay a yearly fee to Groups.io." This creates a direct connection between a specific group, on the one hand, and a member having, or wanting, to get a paid membership, on the other. And this is what I mean by the space warping around groups. People would not be just signing up for a yearly paid membership in groups.io, no matter what groups they want to join, and no matter whether or not those groups are "full." People would try to join a group, discover that it's at its limit, and THEN have to pay groups.io in order to join it. In all respects except technically, that's the same as someone paying to join a specific group. -- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Scott Chase
What I am strongly opposed to is a new member payment NOT tied to a specific group, that would be required to even access any groups that are grandfathered, free Basic and/or already sponsored and paid for by owners. Not tying a member payment to a specific group implies that the requirement for a new Groups.io user access fee is system wide.
I have a tiny grandfathered Basic Group that I personally paid $220 to migrate. If any of my current or even future members are forced to pay a user fee in order to just gain access to Groups.io, my free content is then behind a new paywall and my group will die.
None of my members will pay Groups.io a fee to access my group content. Not one of them. I'm OK with encouraging voluntary donations to Mark or donations to owners of premium groups, but I am not OK with any kind of Groups.io paywall that puts all groups behind a ubiquitous system-wide user-access fee. Scott
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
J,
Yes. I recognize that Mark will almost certainly follow through with his original Pricing Changes, but
I'm opposed to it alone (without adding Samuel's proposal or other mitigations).
I didn't think I had. So, what do you mean by "member payment tied to a specific group or groups"? I'm not aware that such a thing is under consideration. As I understand it the only payments tied to specific groups are in Mark's original Pricing Changes: the base fee for Premium and Enterprise groups, plust the per-member fees charged to those groups above the base number of members. But those are payments made by the group, not the member. Samuel's proposal (this Topic) is that fees paid directly to Groups.io by the member will be for membership "at large" - the user with a paid account can join any number of groups irrespective of that group's available "free slots". Shal
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
I know I'm a little late to this proposal but I'm wondering what problems are being solved by changing the payment strategy. If the problem is disk space cost then charge more for space. If basic operating costs like server hosting and advanced feature development is a problem then charge more for the base cost if groups have a larger resource footprint. We are charitable organization and we do raise money to help pay for our costs and we have memberships to provide extra benefits to our members like discounts to event tickets. We really like groups.io but I think what it is lacking is a membership model and donation capability. If there was a membership model so that groups could charge some of their users a fee for more benefits like adding them to certain forums then groups could raise the necessary funds to pay groups.io for the services. Donation capability would also help.
Another interesting idea is to structure a storage space allocation by user and charge the user based on their specific storage usage. Free users get a fixed amount (50MB) and members of each group have an adder placed on their membership for the amount of storage space they request. This way the group gets their membership fee and groups.io gets their storage cost fee. This type of model requires very little administration and allows small footprint groups to exist for free or for a very small fee. This allows small groups to flourish and hopefully some of then will flourish into larger groups and thus more revenue for groups.io. It provides those groups who need more capability to collect revenue from their users in terms of memberships and provides a way for groups.io to collect revenue from these memberships. groups.io could charge a membership fee of 5% and then a surcharge for member space usage. All the administrator would need to do is set up the membership levels and turn on the donation module to get it working. Then send out announcements to their community and post the information on their websites or social media. Members would be self managed with reminders for membership renewal and possibly an autopay feature which is a great tool to retain members. I think this type of model would provide a foundation to reduce barriers to entry, encourage growth and also increase revenue. I would definitely support this type of model from the administration side, user side and hopefully it makes sense to groups.io and keeps it financially viable. Just my 2 cents. Hugs, Joanie
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Shal is diametrically opposed to Mark’s original idea, in which only owners pay, in that case.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Also please don’t put words in my mouth. I never said things “must” be one way or the other. My feeling is that that would be the best and the simplest. I said that I would not be opposed to a hybrid. What I am strongly opposed to is member payment being tied to a specific group or groups.
On Jan 12, 2021, at 9:34 AM, Shal Farley <shals2nd@...> wrote:
--
J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Member Page is Blank for Moderators?
#bug
As a mod I had permission yesterday, there is nothing in the activity log to indicate any changes, and the owner has not changed any settings.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Jeremy, The difference being that under Drew's proposals, ALL members would be required to take a paid subscription, to be able to join groups (beyond perhaps a few) whichever groups they are. As such it is the opposite of Mark's proposal - it charges members, instead of group owners. Ah. I missed the implication that the ability of a group to pay for additional free slots, and even the base-level free slots, would be taken away under Drew's proposal. And as such it has the same inferiority to Samuel's, which provides for a choice: either the group owner or the member can pay - if neither, then no membership of that group for that member. Agreed. I'm diametrically opposed to J's opinion that it must be 100% one or the other - groups are too varied in their purposes and needs for a one-size-fits-all solution to work. Some group owners would be happy to sponsor (pay for) their entire membership (with or without donations from some members); but would anticipate near zero membership if the members were required to pay Groups.io directly (Drew's plan). Other group owners cannot manage this and would ask their members to pay Groups.io for an account; but would be limited to their plan's base amount (100, 400, 1000) if there were no paid accounts (Mark's original Pricing Changes).
Shal
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 08:16 AM, Marina wrote:
I can't surely see myself breaking my head over slots and who can or cannot join my group based on his/her paid membership.That is the biggest downside to Samuel's proposal IMO. If member fees are tied to specific groups it creates all kinds of problems, most of which probably even aren't predictable. But the predictable ones already mentioned in this thread are bad enough. Member fees completely unrelated to specific groups (as in Drew's idea); or no member fees, just owner fees (possibly tweaked to make them more acceptable to people) seem unencumbered by endless complications. -- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 09:15 AM, monamouroui wrote:
I could see about 30 in the new groups search that are definitely from one person.It really doesn't look suspicious to me. And i'm suspicious lol. -- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Ok, maybe go look at them. I could see about 30 in the new groups search that are definitely from one person. They might have more. Hopefully Mark has something in place that prevents people from selling groups. Sara
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 11:46 AM J_Catlady <j.olivia.catlady@...> wrote:
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Re: Member Page is Blank for Moderators?
#bug
The mod has to have member-page permissions. Are you sure the mod you’re testing with has that?
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Jan 12, 2021, at 8:43 AM, Sandra <sancole827@...> wrote:
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
I think most (in fact, all) brand-new groups start out with 1 member.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Jan 12, 2021, at 8:42 AM, monamouroui <monamouroui@...> wrote:
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Member Page is Blank for Moderators?
#bug
Hi,
Sometime yesterday, when a moderator clicks on a members name in the membership listing, pending members or past members, they are directed to a blank page. There is no information on membership, activity history, email delivery history, notes or owner messages, just a blank page. I have checked as an owner and can see all of the member information, but am directed to a blank page as a moderator. No group settings have changed, and I still have access to the membership listing. Thanks, Sandra
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Samuel, what's to stop group owners from creating dozens of basic groups before Jan 18 with the hope of having "X" number for free slots per group and duplicating their archives in each group? Particularly on the announcement only groups? If you think that wouldn't happen, go take a look at the "New" groups created over the past couple of weeks since Marks new pricing was announced. Any with 1 member only are place holders getting in on the grandfathered status. All those people have to do after Jan 18th is offer to sell their group at a discount to what GIO is charging. Mark gets zero, sneaky entrepreneur gets a small income. Sara
On Tue, Jan 12, 2021, 10:23 AM Samuel Murrayy <samuelmurray@...> wrote: On Tue, Jan 12, 2021 at 03:13 AM, Shal Farley wrote:
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Re: Samuel's Paid User Proposal
#suggestion
Marv Waschke:
I prefer a model where I as owner pay for the service and figure out myself how to pay for the service. I agree as long as the members limit is lifted or a more affordable pricing introduced. My group is in the range of 2100 members, at the moment using 29 MB total storage out of 1GB. I am very thankful to Mark for all the brilliant work and for considering us legacy. I can envisage raising (or paying myself) something around 200 USD yearly, but anything over that would simply and sadly mean leaving GIO. I can't surely see myself breaking my head over slots and who can or cannot join my group based on his/her paid membership. Last but not least, I agree with Catlady when she says: "I don't think it's reasonable (and/or profitable?) to expect millions of group members to understand and deal with something complicated." I respectfully wish to remind that GIO has an international membership. We may be a small minority, but not all my members have a good command of English, which makes complicated things even more complicated. My 2 euro cents, Marina
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