I just noticed with mobile when the topic only has one message if you're viewing it in topics view and then you go in to read the message,  there's no navigation to click to the next topic.

You have to hit the messages button to get back to the topics list to read the next one.

Maybe an oversight?

Maria 

Duane,

           You are correct.  This could be implemented with a "Your Groups" mechanism in mobile or simply change the Groups.io button to behave somewhat more like "Your Groups" on mobile, or even make that link for last message into a button (or use larger text like the group name itself) that indicates something like, "Go to Messages"  with the last posted time off to the side, as it doesn't take up much room.

           Something that is a bit more obvious or as close to 100% consistent across platforms.  I realize that the latter is sometimes not achievable while the former is relatively easy.
--
Brian

A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.  ~ Bill Gray

A while back the change was made such that when you transition between your Groups the default page you land on is the messages page and those are presented either in topics or straight messages based on what the user has chosen.  The same does not occur when interacting with the mobile interface, or at least it doesn't in a way that's intuitively parallel to the way the regular web interface behaves.

On the regular web interface, if I use the "Your Groups" dropdown and choose any group that does not have subgroups I'm shot directly into messages.  The same is true if I choose a specific subgroup of any group that has a primary and subgroups if I choose anything that falls under the actual full group line, which does present the home page for a group.

On the mobile interface, if I use the "Groups.io" button at the top, I get the your groups page, with each group (when that's all there is), or group & subgroup (shown as groupname | subgroup name) shown as a line item followed by the member count, followed by the last message posted link, followed by the subscription status.  My natural reaction would be to hit the main link for the group or group|subgroup that I want to view and I'd expect it to show the messages for that group in the format that I last used, behaving in a parallel way to the regular web interface, but it doesn't - it takes you to the group home page and you have the floating "messages|new topic|more" control beneath it requiring you to hit messages before you actually get to your messages.  I have figured out that one can hit the last message link to go straight there, but for me this is an issue of consistency of behavior between two interfaces to the same information.  It's jarring that the mobile interface requires either an extra step of hitting the messages control or that you must use the last message link to get yourself straight to the message list when this is not how the regular web interface has behaved for quite a while now.
--
Brian

A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.  ~ Bill Gray

I think I've brought this up indirectly in the past and want to bring it up directly now.  As far as I'm concerned, and based on my observations of activity on subgroups on the groups I'm subscribed to, the current way Groups.io presents subgroups essentially forces them into being "dead ends."  They get no traffic because they're essentially treated just like another group in the user interface and when you're viewing the main group they're under you are not made aware that these even exist, and that's even if you're subscribed to them.

The presentation used by whatever forums software that's used by the folks at BleepingComputer.com makes it much easier to know that subgroups exist and actually drives appropriate threads/topics to those subgroups when the main group for a given area is not the most appropriate/focused for a given topic.  It looks like this:

In the case of BC all subforums of a given forum are presented at the top, whether one has subscribed to them or not.  Given the slightly different nature of Groups.io something like this would probably best display all subscribed subgroups similarly to what's shown above but also have either a link or dropdown or something that would indicate that there are other subgroups that one could view if not subscribed or use to subscribe once viewing them.  This would alert anyone using the web interface that subforums do exist in a minimally intrusive way and act to encourage their actual use.

I have no idea how/whether this would play in to the mobile interface, but even something that is a single element alerting users to the presence of subgroups would be useful.

Of course, the only subgroups one should be able to see are subgroups that one would be able to join, but I imagine the mechanisms for presenting what is available for interaction by any given user are already in place.  It has already been mentioned that there are subgroups that are meant only for specific group members, e.g., moderators or owners, or some select list of the group as a whole, and I can't imagine that this isn't implemented by specific inclusion or exclusion of visibility if you don't fit into the list of people who are supposed to have access.

Virtually any group I've ever been a part of has members who, quite appropriately in my view, wish to ask what are occasional off-topic questions to a group of folks they regularly interact with and where they believe they may be able to get a better or more immediate answer by doing so.  Some moderators are much more strict than others about allowing this and some groups have a culture where should someone relatively new break the unwritten "absolutely no off-topic posts, even if noted as such" rule it can get ugly.  A change in presentation for subgroups would make it very easy to add a subgroup dedicated to "idle chatter"/"off-topic questions"/"anything goes [within the bounds of the terms of service]" and get those sorts of things posted there instead of in the main group or other subgroups where it's not appropriate, either.
--
Brian

A lot of what appears to be progress is just so much technological rococo.  ~ Bill Gray

Hello,

Our group uses lots of links and we are having much trouble with membership not being able to figure out how to add an active link.  Many posted links look like this:

https://ecir.groups.io/g/main/post

We keep telling them to add a space to make it active:

https://ecir.groups.io/g/main/post 

However, that is a slow process and even when they have a blue active link in their messages, it sometimes it still doesn't post as active.  Mark in a recent support email you said it might be because members are cutting and pasting from a document or email on a Windows machine. Moderators often do that often as there is such a large amount of often repeated information when new members start posting.  We actually have about three mods whose sole job is to "greet" new members and give them guidance to get started helping their horses.  Is there a better way around doing posting long "form" type messages?  Would copying from a wiki page be better or would that be just as bad because it is still being copied on a PC? 

A How-to Wiki page is being made for members to learn to post links in messages but there are a few bugs that might make life easier for all groups.io users:

1. Is there a way to stop a message from being posted when someone hits "enter" when adding a hyper text link to a message?  If we tell the membership how to make hypertext links, we will likely be overwhelmed with incomplete messages. 

2. Also, Is it possible to not have the text to be linked to auto displayed(?) in the To what URL should this link go field?

It seems like a little thing to remember to do but I'm sure our members will forget to delete the copied Text, and again, links will not work. 

--

-LeeAnne

ECIR Archivist

Return-Path: <noreply@groups.io>

I have been following this group for quite a while but just joined so I could ask a question. Is there a projection for when the beta period for groups.io will end? I believe there are quite a few Yahoo users who are planning to move their activity here but who are waiting for the time when groups.io is out of beta test.

Changes to the site this week:

• BUGFIX: Activity log recorded member adding themselves when a pending direct add was approved.
• CHANGE: Direct add notification emails now list the fully qualified group name instead of the relative group name.
• BUGFIX: Links from +owner message page were incorrect.
• BUGFIX: Thread summaries were incorrectly truncating multibyte characters.
• CHANGE: For direct adds of multiple people, only send one added sub notification to moderators.
• BUGFIX: Convert inline image function crashed when dealing with a message that only had a text/html part.
• NEW: A plethora of new hashtag colors and a new color picker for selecting them. One might even say a cornucopia of new colors, even.
• BUGFIX: Bug in code that removed some mail headers. Wouldn't work if the header was the first header in the series. Very rarely triggered.
• INTERNAL: Switched to Go1.7RC6.
• SYSADMIN: Using new request contexts to make web server log tracing easier.
• CHANGE: Sub add notification is sent to moderators after direct adds.
• CHANGE: Directly added subscriptions now are set to NuM if that's the settings for the group.
• BUGFIX: We weren't properly escaping backslashes in search queries.

Have a good weekend, everybody!

Mark

I have several earthlink hosted domains with emails used in groups.io
and I'm not seeing any blocking.

I have several earthlink hosted domains with emails used in groups.io and I'm not seeing any blocking.

Bob Bellizzi

Messages are the sole opinion of the author. 

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

The more I think about our specific needs, the more actually, I think a database with option to add pictures would work perhaps even better.

Because a) it would be opt in b)we could define the fields of info so that it's standardized and the info is easier to look at and more useful perhaps than what people put in their profile... c)it would be subgroup specific.

As for a potential directory option that can be enabled for select groups, Yes, I agree one would need to define what would be shown, etc.

Ah! I misinterpreted what Mark was saying I guess then: his idea was that owners/mods would see the member list as we do now, but members would only see profile info & pics? something like that?

Maria

And also since it needs to be an "opt in" thing this would have the
added disadvantage of not allowing an opt in for this choice.

We keep our member list private and mods/owners need access 100% all the
time.

And for a directory option in the future, I think it's Ok to have
another menu item and for this to be something that people can opt in to
and select a picture they want to use JUST for that sub-group's
directory, etc.

But again - our needs can probably be meet with some enhanced options in
the database section (for now).

Right now, there's a 'Members Visible' setting. My first thought would
be that this new member list would show up in the case where Members
Visible is set to Subscribers, and would just replace what
non-moderators/owners would see, which right now is the table view of
members. This has the advantage of not requiring a new sidebar option
and group setting. The disadvantage is that moderators/owners would
never see this view.

Messages are the sole opinion of the author. 

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

hmm. no, not ideal - my initial reaction is a not great - a bit like J.

And also since it needs to be an "opt in" thing this would have the added disadvantage of not allowing an opt in for this choice.

We keep our member list private and mods/owners need access 100% all the time.

Maybe the database idea could work for now instead if you add the option to upload a picture and people can opt to enter their email address or contact info plus other info if they like...

And for a directory option in the future, I think it's Ok to have another menu item and for this to be something that people can opt in to and select a picture they want to use JUST for that sub-group's directory, etc.

But again - our needs can probably be meet with some enhanced options in the database section (for now).

Maria

Maybe tweeting some of these folks directly?

https://www.earthlink.com/about-us/leadership

or tweeting their main twitter page: https://twitter.com/EarthLink or their customer care: https://twitter.com/EarthLinkCares

Maria