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Re: Member list format issues
#bug
On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 7:43 AM Andy Wedge <andy_wedge@...> wrote:
I tightened up that column as part of some changes to improve the mobile site (and upcoming app). It should be fixed now. Mark
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Amazon Prime is $130 per year but I don’t think that’s at all comparable.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
Sure if you go by the number of current IDs it’s huge. But some unknown and probably very large fraction would quit immediately if made to pay. There are for sure a heap ‘o inactive accounts lying around, a heap of people with multiple accounts, and a heap of people who would just plain quit. I think you’d be left with a small fraction of that figure.
On Dec 31, 2020, at 12:14 PM, Chris Jones via groups.io <chrisjones12@...> wrote:
--
J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: #bug Reply area blank
#bug
Got it figured out. The other day I got 'cute' and inserted an image in the SIGNATURE area. It was an image of our Roadtrek RV with my Name, State and YR/make of the RV below the image.
It did not show always when looking at my settings, but it DID show in any reply. Then I ran into the problem of not having the place to type any reply. I just removed the image from my signature as that was the latest change that I could think of doing. This seems to have fixed my problem. -- Hank S. Littlestown, PA One mailbox from a Gettysburg address -- Hank S. Littlestown, PA One mailbox from a Gettysburg address
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Re: Member list format issues
#bug
Mark,
Andy wrote: The format of the member list has changed so that it now takes twoI'm seeing this also in the Delivery column, even when the width of the display window is more than adequate. It looks like the Delivery column has a fixed width that is inadequate. This behavior is not replicated in the Email column. It and the Display Name column resize with the window width, and the badges in the Email column are still clipped by the Delivery column when the window size is too narrow. Was this an attempt to fix a bug for something else?If it was an attempt to fix the display of badges then I'd say the fix is incomplete because it did not include the Email column. Shal also Firefox 84.0.1 (64-bit) under Win10 Pro
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Chris Jones
On Thu, Dec 31, 2020 at 07:58 PM, J_Catlady wrote:
It's a huge disincentive and might destroy the business altogether.It would be, but a simple solution would be to give every new account holder a 12 month grace period before any charge applies. In addition, I think the amount charge could be very modest; with the number of individual "Poster IDs" that are on record a $5 annual charge would bring in in excess of $20,000,000, unless I have miscounted somewhere. I don't know what Amazon charges for a Prime account in the US but in the UK the charge is more than that per month. I value what Groups.io has to offer and want it to be on a sound financial footing. IMHO voluntary donations simply won't generate anywhere near enough revenue. Chris
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 09:40 PM, Jim Betz wrote:
That has already been suggested in this thread (what? you haven't read al 250 messages?;) and it still means asking people to pay to take part in a bunch of unknown mailing lists. I really doubt it would fly. Put yourself in the shoes of a potential, not current, customer. Would you really be willing to pay money for the privilege of being able to sign up for mailing lists before even knowing WTH they are or what groups.io is all about? It's a huge disincentive and might destroy the business altogether. -- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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in pending messages, "You must include a message" red warning shows up even when there's a message
#bug
In the "Send Message" feature from within viewing a pending message, a red warning "You must include a message" shows up even when a message has been entered. I think I reported this before but don't remember what happened. The bug is still there and is very disconcerting. You think something may have gone wrong with the message causing the member not to receive it. This time, after the member didn't respond, I contacted her outside groups.io to make sure she got it.
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Member list format issues
#bug
Hi Mark,
After a brief discussion on GMF I'm raising this as a bug. The format of the member list has changed so that it now takes two lines per member for those in my group due to the number of badges that are displayed after the delivery method. Others report different results depending on the OS platform. Was this an attempt to fix a bug for something else? Thanks Andy (Win 10 & Firefox 84.0.1)
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Re: #bug Reply area blank
#bug
Oh, good point.
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Dec 31, 2020, at 6:28 AM, Bruce Bowman <bruce.bowman@...> wrote:
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: #bug Reply area blank
#bug
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 03:52 PM, Hank Seamon wrote:
When I choose to REPLY in out Roadtrek CyberRally, I can see the topic, my FROM, but the area to type a reply is blank.Hank -- A second person has now reported this same problem in GMF. We need to look into what combination of group settings might do this, particularly those in your Message Policies block. On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 06:13 PM, J_Catlady wrote: This same thing happened with a member of one of my groups using Thunderbird awhile back.Hank's provided screenshot demonstrates that he's attempting to reply using the GIO web interface, not an email client. Regards, Bruce
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Sandi D <sandi.asgtechie@...>
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 06:04 AM, Samuel Murrayy wrote:
My reasoning for the silver group is to allow groups who might want to be come larger or use more features to be able to do so without a very sudden change in pricing...I can't afford $20 a month but I want to pay something to GIO for the service being offered which is the ability to find and join basic groups. I agree with everyone on this thread who has suggested there needs to be something between $0 for 99 member groups and $20 a month for 101 member groups (not counting the owner). I don't know what that something looks like. I want to pay something for the use of my personal GIO accounts and not because I am made one of the group Owners so I can assist them with the technology side of group administration. There is no way for me to show my appreciation for GIO as an account holder other than to create a group with myself as the sole member so I could "donate" periodically by upgrading and downgrading. I buy a number of monthly services that cost me $0.99 to $2.99 a month. I would pay something in that range for the privilege of having a GIO account so that I could find and join the basic groups who are on GIO. These are 2 different issues/suggestions. One is introducing a group owner price point between $0 and $20. The other is a mechanism to allow GIO account holders to pay for the privilege of GIO membership should they want to "donate" to a business model (not to a non profit) or should they want to become a paying member of GIO. Of note, I have created a group with me alone in that group so I can pay Mark for what I consider a valuable service. I found it very simple to do. Create a basic group. Go to Admin, Upgrade, select Premium for one month and enter your credit card. -- Sandi Dickenson
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
groups.io, as was Yahoo, revolves around a very large number of totally
informal groups whose members have only one thing in common - an interest in the subject of the group. I am in 21 of those (which puts paid to Samuel's suggestion of an average of 5. A few of those are very active. Many are less active but I remain subscribed for historical reasons and some of those I have set to 'special notices' as they are for past interests but want to keep a passive interest. A few were joined for a specific interest which came up, like information on a particular type of software, which I joined at the time that interest appeared but could probably leave. Around half of my groups have over 100 members, some well into the thousands. A very few of those groups are tied in with a national club/organisation which has an annual membership fee. To some extent a Premium or tiered Free subscription could be absorbed in that. There again one of these national organisations is indirectly responsible for many groups to cover all its interests, 50 or so as a finger in the air. No way could a reasonable annual fee for all these diverse groups be done that way, the membership fee would increase above that which most members could justify - result, a reduced membership of the national organisation as people decide it is too much. Remember also that membership of GIO groups is a dynamic variable, with people coming and going all the time. Is it fair to charge for those 50 or so who happened to have joined on the eve of a billing date who leave a week later? I appreciate that Mark has to cover his costs but the model of free sponsored by the relatively few Premium and even less Enterprise groups is not going to work. This is very clear in that the proposed rates are totally out of the question for most non-commercial enthusiast groups that must make up most of their market. Dave http://davesergeant.com
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
[This reply is partly in response to Patty, but my suggestion is similar/related to Jim's.]
Mark, I'm trying to think how to increase profits for you without too much complexity (and with only a tiny increase in support desk calls) but while allowing the potential for large non-commercial groups. Your proposed pricing structure puts the onus on group owners to manage membership fees, and so you'd be essentially limiting Groups.io to groups with owners who have the technical and managerial expertise to do that. I'm afraid that if Groups.io wants to be able to tap potential income from large non-commercial groups, then Groups.io would have to take care of some of the subscription payment side of things. Can I assume that on average, the average user is a member of no more than 5 groups? (Yes, some users are members of dozens or even hundreds of groups, but thousands others are a member of just one or two groups.) This means that if you can squeeze just $2.50 per year from those users, it would be the same as having a premium group owner pay $0.05 per member. I suggest, therefore, that you create two types of users, namely free users who pay nothing and paying users who pay $2.50 per year. Free users can only join groups that have free-user slots left over. Paying users can join an unlimited number of groups without filling up any free-user slots. Oh, wait, let me explain "free-user slots". All groups have a number of free-user slots. These are slots (i.e. room for members) that are available to free users. Free basic groups have 100 free-user slots. Premium groups have as many free-user slots as the owner had paid for. So if the owner pays e.g. $20 per month for his group, then his group gets 100+400 free-user slots. This means that up to 500 people who are not paying users can join that group, but once the 500 free-user slots have been filled, any additional members would need to be paying users. Paying users can join a group regardless of whether that group has any free-user slots left over (and when a paying user joins a group, it doesn't fill up a free-user slot). Non-paying users (i.e. free users) can only join a group if that group has any free-user slots left over. (Obviously the group owner can still refuse people membership of the group, regardless of whether they are free users or paying users.) This sounds complicated on paper, but I'm sure you can figure out a way to write it down simply :-) The advantages of such a system include:
Whether group owners want to add all of this on their home pages is up to them. Group owners who are willing to pay for all members in a premium plan can simply write on their home page that membership is free. Or, they could write "join our group for only $2.50 per year" (without the need to mention that $2.50 actually allows users to join other groups as well). Or they could write "a small membership fee may be required" and then include instructions and a link to Groups.io's paid plan in the notice. When a free user tries to join a group, the moderator would be told that this is a free user and be told how many free-user slots the group has left. The moderator can then choose to accept the member, or tell them that the group no longer does (or doesn't currently) accept free users (or that the aspiring member doesn't qualify for it), or (as a third option, provided by Groups.io's systems) put the user in a "waiting list"... for when some other free user leaves the group or for when the group owner decides the person has become deserving of a free-user slot. People who join via mail (and don't register an account at Groups.io) would always be free users (initially) because they don't register an account at Groups.io. Obviously if they try to join a group that has no more free-user slots, the reply notification would explain that to them, and direct them to the Groups.io sign-up page. When a paid user doesn't renew his subscription, he gets moved to the "waiting list" of the groups that he is a member of, and the moderator gets a notification, and then the moderator can choose to assign a free-user slot to that user, leave him in the waiting list, or remove him from the group. (An idea for the "waiting list" is that people who are on the waiting list are provisional members, i.e. they get read-only access via the web, but can't post and can't receive e-mail.) See, $2.50 per year is not much, and even if a user wants to join just one group, $2.50 per year is not much. I'll wager that many users of large non-commercial groups would be willing to pay $2.50 per year for their membership, even if they belong to only one group. Allow me to speculate about Patty's group (and assuming she started this group after the grandfathering cut-off): it may be difficult for her to manage paid subscriptions herself (setting up a system to get payments, keep track of who paid and who didn't, then reconcile the updated payment lists with the e-group's own membership list, send reminders, explain to members why she had to remove them, etc.). However, she could get a free basic group and simply tell everyone that they need to be paid user of Groups.io to join her group (although she will be able to make a few exceptions for deserving people, i.e. her group's 100 free-user slots, which she can allocate however she desires). Samuel (PS. My suggestions about payment plans in previous mails were based on the assumption that only group owners pay.)
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
I am owner/co-owner of several Basic (Free) lists and one that moved to Premium when image storage exceeded 1 GB. A couple of these lists have 2000 members but less than 500MB of image storage. If these two lists were to upgrade to premium after Jan 18th each would cost $1100 per year. Will the new price changes be the last? We have had two changes in the last two years. The fee per member concept will likely be modified in the future. Perhaps a Basic list should have a fee per member assessed when the list is over 400 subscribers. My list continues to grow so I am doing some long term (5 year) planning. If three years from now my Basic list has to upgrade to Premium, it will cost me $1100/per year for the last two years of the next five years ($2200 total). If I upgrade now to Premium I will have to pay $220/year for the next five years ($1100 total). I polled my list members of the dilemma “Do I remain Basic and hope for no price increase although there have been two in the last two years; Or do we upgrade to Premium now at $220 per year recognizing that our list size represents a far greater cost than small free lists. Nobody supported an upgrade to Enterprise (for large lists). So far 76% of responders support an upgrade to Premium. Some said that the service deserved more financial support than ‘free’. Others felt that the value of the list to them deserved financial support and the support from Mark deserved compensation. The poll runs another week after which the list will be upgraded to Premium. The issue of image storage brought up another issue. Should video files be stored in photos or separately? With limited storage, video files gobble up space. I have restricted image size for photos, however no control over video files. Perhaps video files should not be allowed in Basic lists and stored separately in Premium and Enterprise lists to help list owners manage them. ken clark www.shastasprings.com
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Jeremy H
To put it simply, the issue with Mark's proposal is that it assumes that owners of future groups will be prepared to pay for their members - a minimum of $0.55 per year, per member [1].
We shall see... I know that, unless I was getting a larger amount - somehow - from them, I would not be. Which follows from the basic trilemma of any service like Groups.io: who pays: group owners, group members or a third party (e.g. advertisers). Mark has ruled out (strongly) the last; and (so far, as direct payers) members... note [1] unless they are restricting themselves to a small basic group (which again, absent a special need, is not something I would do. Jeremy
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Mark Fletcher,
I know that you are opposed to a 'per member' type of payment that goes from the group member directly to you. (Yes, I get it that you need to make a living.) I'd like to propose a variant that you may not have considered. How about a payment - per member, directly to groups.io, using PayPal or a credit ... that is a single payment for unlimited number of groups joined. And perhaps you add in a discount for pre-paying several years in advance. The point is that only you have to figure out how to accept and monitor membership - but the membership is at the groups.io level and not at the individual group level. - respectfully ... Jim
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
I’d like to share my thoughts on large groups and the perhaps-inevitable necessity of monetizing them, sooner or later: In short, my group is noncommercial, but big. It’s large enough that it would be prohibitively expensive for me as the volunteer owner to pay for if we were no longer grandfathered. We don’t really use functions apart from email messaging and the archive of old messages. I paid the $220 out of pocket during our mad flight from Yahoo last year. We switched back to free last month. Though noncommercial, groups of this size represent juicy potential revenue that Groups.io would benefit from tapping. I think the majority of my members would grumble initially and a few would flounce, but most would be willing to pony up, say, $5 per year. However, this would only be feasible if there were a way to require payment annually - and automatically collect/track payments, issue reminders to those who haven’t paid, and then remove people who don’t pay after 2-3 reminders. It that weren’t automated, it would be an utter nightmare, and we’d need to move, probably to Google. As a group owner, I think it is ethically reasonable to expect my members to help ensure the sustainability of Groups.io. However, the logistics of collecting fees would have to be automated, or it's too burdensome for the group owner. I now have a co-moderator but ran the group solo until we moved to Groups.io a year ago. I’ve never asked for compensation. However, Susan’s mention of member fees in the Park Slope Parents group makes me think it would be reasonable for moderators of large groups to get a modest honorarium. So, say GIO wanted $2 per member, and we charged $5 annually, $3 per person could be split between the moderators. I do think that mandatory fees would result in culling of inactive members in groups like mine that have existed for nearly 20 years. So it’s possible we’d be left with 1000 members instead of 3000. It’d still be a large group tho. Again, I’m well aware that my group is grandfathered! I’m just trying to think long-term and imagine how current free groups - especially large ones - could be reasonably asked to bear some of the expense of running Groups.io and ensure its sustainability. I appreciate Mark’s promise to stick to the original terms, and I trust his intentions. I also know that GIO has to be financially viable or it will end. Patty Stokes Group owner, Berlin Scholars
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
Royal Pita as in pita bread? I mean, if we’re talking about loaves of bread and pieces of cake. 😊
toggle quoted messageShow quoted text
On Dec 30, 2020, at 3:47 PM, KWKloeber via groups.io <KWKloeber@...> wrote:
-- J Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.
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Re: Pricing Changes
#update
KWKloeber
Wirtz:
  Mark: When I previously said "bait n switch" I wasn't referring to the current issue. I know that wasn't the nefarious plan so I even hate to clarify it, but here goes: I meant in the big picture like, "I know gio couldn't be a success if I start out with huge charge$$$, so I'll get it started by offering a bunch of free groups to gain a foothold/share then start building into paid groups once the platform is out there. But I'm keeping that plan in my vest for now." I know that isn't the history of it. But the alternative (poor business plan or poor projections?) is a definite issue here. I don't mean that in a criticism sense -- plenty of good folks have grand schemes to make a profitable business (better than sliced bread) and end up crashing. Some don't crash. But then what? Bread isn't an issue because we can always go buy a loaf. But it isn't exactly a pc of cake to switch/migrate groups when they fail. It's a royal PITA, at least for our group with members who barely hang on without jumping ship to a FB group or wherever. All I can say is, as in our instance where it would have been nearly a grand a yr for 1600 members (of which two dozen are active,) there is NO WAY the owner would have given gio a first-look, no less a second-look. Again, I don't see how membership is the driver of costs. It's activity (storage/bandwidth) not the raw number of users -- unless I am missing something. What I am saying is that the price platform/structure needs to consider what actually costs you money to provide the service, not something arbitrary like 400 vs 500 members. That was what moved our owner to migrate to the premium level (storage GBs, not how many members we have.) Maybe the reality is that FREE anything, just isn't a good business model for gio because it costs a lot (in infrastructure) that you just cannot support?? What would be your breakeven if you did away with all free? Would it save enough money in infrastructure and operating costs to make gio profitable so that you can take a vacation (at least one day a year :-) ) Thx for your service to all of us! -ken
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moderated
Re: Add ability to reply to specific message
#suggestion
Marisa-ATLAS
On Wed, Dec 30, 2020 at 02:57 PM, J_Catlady wrote:
To do that from the site, simply copy the section you want to quote into your browser and then click "Reply."Good deal! I didn't realize this was the way to do it--thanks so much, everyone!
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