On Wed, May 22, 2019 at 11:25 AM, Chris Vaughan wrote:
This means I have a edit each message coming in to highlight it is from an external person and to remind the group that a reply will go to just the group and special action is required to reply to the sender.
I have no hands - on experience of allowing non - members to post but as far as I can see there are currently no automatic processes available to help. That said a couple of points spring to mind.
How big is your committee? Is it so large that its members cannot spot a post from a non - member
without your having to flag it up for them? I think I would also argue that it should
not be necessary to explain that replies to a non - member post will only be seen by members and not the non - member; point that fact out
once by all means, but not every time!
Further to the point about emphasising the fact that any given post is from a non - member, how do you currently do that? Do you insert a line of "bold text" in the body of the message or what? It crossed my mind that you could set up a "Non - Member Post" hashtag and insert that during moderation, but while hashtags show up clearly on the web UI they are not necessarily all that obvious if members are using email access. If the hashtag idea works for you you could always ask Mark (on beta) if he can provide the option of adding an automated hastage to non - member posts, although how much traction that suggestion would get is anyone's guess.
I can fully see that the present system does require some additional work for you but you can perhaps minimise it by encouraging your (committee) members to develop a reasonable understanding of how Groups.io works without your having to explain it to them all the time. I'm all for helping people (i.e. individual group members) but I draw the line if I suspect that someone expects to be spoon - fed in perpetuity.
Chris
