Paul,

Groups.io digests strip out the message that is replied to, so in our
test group this led to nearly unintelligible digests. Is it possible
to change groups.io digests so they mirror Yahoogroups behaviour?

I've wished for limited quoting in digests. By limited I mean just the direct quote (first-level) and not the quotes that quote drags in. One of the defects of the Y!Group digest is that it can get unreadable when a message quotes a message and that message quoted prior messages, and so on.
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/1433

Later I proposed a snippet of the quoted message, rather than the whole quote, might provide sufficient context in the majority of cases. That is probably simpler to implement than my prior suggestion (so more likely to be implemented). It would also have the benefit of being briefer, keeping the Digest more readable.
https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/2267

PS I’ve found a way to fudge the issue (by turning on the signature
block) for all users except those who reply via the web interface
without quoting the message they are replying to.

Hm... That might represent a bug of sorts. You mean the quote detection fails when there's a trailing sig applied by the group?

“Educating” our users is unlikely to produce the required result.

That is the bane of all email systems. Well, maybe all systems.

Shal

Ok, but I thought the list was for purposes of users to check whether or not they might be affected, in which case you’d want to explicitly include those.

--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

I am all for plumbers as long as they are without the crack.  As a dog owner, I feel they are perhaps not getting equal time on the downtime. Who do I complain to about that?  why is it all about the cats?   Sigh. Well, they DID rule Egypt and were (rightly) worshipped there. I would never speak against a cat, lest they haunt me or send their fellow cat minions to shred my petunias.    And my cats are telling me to shut up so I guess I am done as I must go feed them immediately,,,   yes dears, on the way dears..

Ro

Actually, I think all of ATT email and Verizon are handled at and by Yahoo.
Doesn't that make you feel wonderful?  I get several kickbacks a week from att.net, pacbell.net, etc both to our hosted domain email and groups.io
--

Bob Bellizzi

Founder, Fuchs Friends ®
Founder & Executive Director, The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

Of course his original complaint was that as things stand one cannot download the Past members at all - he has to screen-scrape them.

Shal, there is currently no way to download Past members unless one copies each page separately.
And that becomes an ever growing issue.
You idea of adding additional User Status values would handle it nicely.
J, Sorry if I there is a misunderstanding about this.
--

Bob Bellizzi

Founder, Fuchs Friends ®
Founder & Executive Director, The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

J,

I haven’t been following this thread but would be strongly against
keeping past members in the member list, lumped together with the
current members, if that’s what’s being suggested.

Only in the Download table, not in the displayed lists.

The members who have "Left" or "Spam Left" (or removed by any other means) would be distinguished from active members by one or more of the Status column enumerations.

The idea is that someone who is managing their membership off-site in a spreadsheet or database application would then have a single table in which they could find any member, past or present. For some of the things Bob wanted to track that would be much more convenient than downloading the "Past" members separately.

Of course his original complaint was that as things stand one cannot download the Past members at all - he has to screen-scrape them.

Shal

BTW, someone posted here a link to the GMF wiki page explaining FBL. You might want to add Verizon, Bellsouth and Netscape to the list.
--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 07:05 am, Shal Farley wrote:

I posit that leaving the subscription intact will reduce the intensity of those reactions and will reduce the sense of urgency in "fixing" the problem. Both of those can go a long way to improving member comprehension and willingness to learn.

Shal,

I think that's a real stretch but it's a remarkable try. I see why your calling is sales. ;)
 
--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

Hi,

  As an owner/moderator of several groups and a member of 3 or 4 times as
many ... I'm finding the Photos section to be difficult to use/manage.  I'm
talking about the way that Photos is organized by Alphabetical order and
does not have any other options.

  When you have time - please add both the ability to change the order
                                      of the albums (Date).
                                    - and please add the ability to search photos by a
                                      name -or- date By Photo Name.

  For all searches please add (if it isn't already there) the ability to
use wildcards such as *find*.txt" that will return all instances of
the string "find" followed by the string "txt".  Example only.

                                                  - thanks for considering this ... Jim B.

I’m just seeing this now and am not  sure why I’m mentioned in it, except that I’d wanted symmetry between available info about past vs banned members. I haven’t been following this thread but would be strongly against keeping past members in the member list, lumped together with the current members, if that’s what’s being suggested.

--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 07:36 pm, Shal Farley wrote:

For that wouldn't you need an export of the Activity log instead? Or in a Premium group does the "Past" list make that distinction (Left vs. Spam Left)? - I don't have any examples of Spam Left in my one Premium group.

That would work except the Past members do not exist in the Download and, to date, I have no inactive members out of almost 3500.

And if so, perhaps the better solution would be to make that information additional enumerations of the "Status" and/or "User Status" fields of the export.

Hmm, speaking of which, I wonder what the User Status "2=Inactive" means. Again no examples in my Premium group.

I think that keeping them within the cover of Members would be a good idea with Left & Spam Left status indicators.
I think that would also make J a little bit more happy because then all past & present member's could be managed and analyzed at the within the same data set offline with a single download.
--

Bob Bellizzi

Founder, Fuchs Friends ®
Founder & Executive Director, The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 07:38 pm, D R Stinson wrote:

If you really need everything your way, perhaps you need to pay the money to become an enterprise group so you can control everything. As for myself, I have two paid groups and feel that what I pay is quite reasonable for the added storage and additional owner abilities. I accept groups.io's unique little quirks and am in no rush to see the individuality of the site be lost. I'd much rather see the development continue that was pushed aside while those people who stayed on other systems to the bitter end were rescued.

Amen brother.  Articles I found state that the average  AOL charge per member is 20.03 per month and 2.58 million people actually pay.  Essentially that's their entre to the internet and everything on it.  If one considers it necessary to access the internet and pays that amount it's an admission of necessity.

Same here.  If one wishes to have exactly what they want on groups.io, they are saying that their group is an important mission to them.
If that's true and you are the owner doesn't it make sense to invest in it as a necessary expense?  A lousy $10 peer month is half of AOL's average member cost.

Thank you for your frankness.  If I'm getting it free, I consider the giver as a benefactor and never bite the hand giving the free handout; We operated free for several months and Mark was totally responsive to reasonable requests backed up by sufficient info and after discussion at Beta.

I'm from Brooklyn.  My motto is "Lead, follow or get outta my way" but I am never, never rude to my landlord when I ask him for a favor or free perk.  Actually whether I pay for it or not.
--

Bob Bellizzi

Founder, Fuchs Friends ®
Founder & Executive Director, The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

On Fri, May 11, 2018 at 06:53 pm, Bruce Bowman wrote:

I could elaborate on the consequences of doing otherwise, but I don't think I really need to.

That's right, it's not needed. Mark has proven that he is an astute businessperson who does not need a lecture from any of us on the "consequences" of removing his adorable cat pix. :-)  
--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

On Sat, May 12, 2018 at 09:06 am, Helen wrote:

The world would be a better place if other parts of it were run as efficiently as groups.io.

Amen.
 
--
J

 

Messages are the sole opinion of the author, especially the fishy ones.

I wish I could shut up, but I can't, and I won't. - Desmond Tutu

I'm not quite satisfied. I'm extremely satisfied. We looked at several other group hosting methods after yahoo!groups and even tried a few, and they all had major downsides. groups.io is an absolute breath of fresh air, and I still feel grateful for it, even after almost three years of being here. It just works. The world would be a better place if other parts of it were run as efficiently as groups.io.

The cat pix, it goes without saying, are the icing on the cake (-;

Helen

Bob,

One of the biggest problems is that in many cases, the intended
recipient is not informed of the groups.io message being intercepted
and never delivered to them in any form.

I'm uncertain what scenario you are considering, but it isn't this one.

This scenario starts with messages that are delivered to the member, albeit possibly to Spam or some folder other than their Inbox.

In that case, there is no communication possible between groups.io and
the intended recipient to instruct the recipient, period, so all
schemes depending on communication are not possible.

That's generally not the behavior of major email services' spam filters. As long as the message source does not appear on a blacklist, and/or hasn't established a strongly negative reputation, the filter will tend to pick and choose messages to divert based on the message content.

In particular off-list notifications (such as the "resume" notice, or a even a member notice from the group's mods via the site) are not likely to be downrated just because group message traffic was.

So showing them how to set up any new provider account doesn't seem an
option.

Well, it certainly is an "impertinent" response, IMO.

I would only suggest it to Yahoo Mail users who might actually prefer another provider, but came over from a Yahoo Group having believed that it was necessary or better to use Yahoo Mail with that service.

Shal

J,

But what I'm still not understanding is how the proposed method ... is
any different or better than the current method ... IN TERMS OF the
situation repeating itself ad infinitum with the particular member.

It has been noted that the unsubscription in the current mechanism is often associated with various strong emotional responses from the member: panic, confusion, anger, a sense of betrayal. None of that is conducive to resolving a complex issue.

I posit that leaving the subscription intact will reduce the intensity of those reactions and will reduce the sense of urgency in "fixing" the problem. Both of those can go a long way to improving member comprehension and willingness to learn.

Shal

J,

Is the current proposition different in that their configuration would
somehow change to prevent future emails from going into spam?

I don't think there's anything that can be done at the Groups.io end to have that effect. And I don't think the "Spam Report Hold" proposal is significantly different than Unsubscribed For Spam in terms of how it affects the delivery of future emails.

Rather, I see its fundamental advantage as allowing the member continued access via web.

This aspect may have some additional benefits:

1) Activist moderators need not be in a Premium group to aide the affected members (no need for Direct Add). They could contact the member off-list and/or initiate additional "spam probes" (akin to bounce probes) to help the member resume email communication.

2) Members who prefer to access the group via the web need not be worried or panicked to straighten out the issue, they can take their time. They can be encouraged to reduce or eliminate future incidents by way of switching to Special Notices or No Email in the future.

Balanced against these potential benefits is the very real complexity cost of implementing the mechanism, both for Mark as developer and for us as mods and owners to learn and teach about it (but the latter may be no worse than what we face already with the Unsubscribe mechanism).

Shal

Ronaldo,

What's keeping those later messages from getting stuck in the same
spamfilter?

Nothing by mechanism.

The intent is that the service interruption will either:

1) Bring the member's attention to the issue, and encourage him/her to take whatever corrective action is necessary to keep group messages out of their Spam folder, to avoid a repeat of the inconvenience.

or

2) Stop wasting the sender's and receiver's electrons sending messages to a user who has lost interest in the group's content.

From what I've read, the email service providers by and large believe that (2) is the majority case, and that relatively few of their affected users fall into category (1). Absent clairvoyance I can't say that they're wrong -- we moderators only ever hear from users in category (1), so our perception may be biased.

Shal

Hi,
I have searched this topic but have found no mention of it. If this is the not the correct place to post this feature request please tell where I should do this.

Currently, my Yahoogroups list puts outs digests that not only include the message posted but also attaches the message that is being replied to. Ours is a busy group so this is an important feature—context would quickly be lost otherwise.
Groups.io digests strip out the message that is replied to, so in our test group this led to nearly unintelligible digests. Is it possible to change groups.io digests so they mirror Yahoogroups behaviour?

PS I’ve found a way to fudge the issue (by turning on the signature block) for all users except those who reply via the web interface without quoting the message they are replying to. “Educating” our users is unlikely to produce the required result.

Regards,
--
Paul Fraser