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On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 02:16 PM, Duane wrote:

You could send them a link to the message,

Sure - include it in the "Welcome" member notice.

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 02:27 PM, Duane wrote:

In my groups, those members/chiders would be on permanent moderation

Agreed. The last two sentences in my guidelines are "Straying from these guidelines may result in a friendly email from the moderator. Serious or repeated violations may result in temporary restrictions on posting." Fortunately I've set the kind of tone in my groups that has made the latter event very rare. The last time I did it the person voluntarily left the group, which was fine with me.

I put a lot of effort into making my groups useful for people and I'm not willing to take a lot of time to deal with inappropriate posting.?

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 01:14 PM, Candice Massey wrote:

every time the chiders pile on and self-designate posts by persons they dislike as "political speech"

In my groups, those members/chiders would be on permanent moderation.? All of their messages to the group would be carefully watched and rejected as needed.? If they didn't get the hint quickly, the messages would simply be deleted instead of rejected.? I've even banned a couple of people that insist on doing things their way, regardless of any communication I've sent to the contrary.

If you haven't already, you might want to make a 'sticky' of the topic where you're allowing comment.? For those that read online, it would always be at the top and easy to find.? When this mess clears up, you could 'unstick' it so it would naturally settle down the list.

Duane
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On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 01:15 PM, Lynn Babcock wrote:

Is there a way to send it out to just the new members?

You could send them a link to the message, but there's not a way to selectively resend the message/poll itself.

Duane
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I would like to include new members in a poll I previously sent out. Is there a way to send it out to just the new members?

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 12:51 AM, Gesine wrote:

wonders what we need to do.
****

Gesine
The issue is whether someone "violated" the GIO terms of service, etc, or if it was contrary to a rule about messages/topics for the group itself.? Mark is not going to police the rules of a billion groups - that's up to the group owner/moderators.? It sounds like the latter, which is why no would have gotten a reply about the complaint.

The resolution depends on whether it was indeed contrary to a group 'rule,' whether the member is just a continual trouble-maker, and whether the member is "worth" further contributions to the group.? GIO ain't the government and it ain't necessarily free speech.? Anyone in this land has the right to offend someone else, and everyone has the right to be offended by someone else.? That's life.
Sometimes the better part of valor (not to be clique) is to let things ride for the 1st, 2nd, 3rd time.? Then moderate the member.
Giving a troublemaker an audience s/he wants, reinforces and can perpetuate the behavior.? "Get over it," means s/he doesn't need to get over it -- because s/he now has an audience.? It could also be that the member just had a bad day and hit "send" too soon.? We've al been there.
Broad shoulders, water on a duck's back, sticks and stones..... all those related euphemisms apply.??

The above is completely different than a member who likes to spread false info -- say, absolutely incorrect technical info that pertains to the group's mission and members may use.? That deserves to be countered and shut down or at least controlled.

-ken

I am the anxious Co-Owner in this case.

All 4 persons involved were off-topic for the thread we were on, and had been previously asked to not post chidings about potential political subjects publicly, rather to refer them to one of our three Mods for appropriate action. The initial post was off topic in that she was expressing despair about the CV-19 situation and her isolation as part of an on-topic post that she thought she had sent to a friend OFF-LINE, but messed up and hit the list with it instead, she posted an apology, but not before a helpful mod jumped in on the off-topic portion. The next post (from the other Mod/Co-owner) was intended to comfort the OP, and was not terribly political, except that it identified itself as a political post in the way Gesine has said. The balance of the post was comfort and a plea to stay inside and take reasonable measures to not get sick, so we could help solve the CV-19 epidemic together. Then a frequent chider chimed in to tell publicly again Off-Topic that this statement had no right to be on our list. We have in the past designated one thread to allow for the venting of CV-19 fears where cordial political speech (no blaming of actual politicians or parties were allowed) would be appropriate, because these chiders pounce on things that are NOT political in order to suppress speech. I put the topic on Moderation oping to chill the heated speech. Another frequent marginal poster tried to post nasty comments that got rejected by me because it was after the topic moderation.

Meanwhile, I sent stern notes to all of the 4 posters, explaining to each that they were seriously off-topic and needed to remove their posts from that topic , and that the only appropriate way to deal with what they considered to be political speech against our guidelines (states only no political speech that IDs politicians and parties, general political speech needed to be cordial) would be to contact one of the other Mods for review. I got nasty abusive responses from two of them, put them on a one week Moderation until this coming Sunday, and one did remove her post after being Modded. I did not Moderate the other two yet, preferring to wait to see what they had to say for themselves first, these were the OP who was apologetic and thanked me for intervening and our posting Mod.? The OP asked me to remove her two posts and edit her OP to remove the inadvertent political speech that opened this Pandora's box. I could not raise my fellow Mod who had posted the potentially objectionable material, despite several messages. I finally, split her off-topic post into the one "political speech allowed" thread, pending this Mod's response.

It was at this point that yet a fifth person sent the "Content flagged as objectionable" note to groups.io managers, a person whom misrepresented the facts in her note. This fifth person has a long-standing feud with the Mod in question.

We had a previous kurfluffle over CV-19 and so-called political speech when discussing Governmental responses about a month ago. I was anxious to put a lid on a nasty fight before it infected the rest of the group. I carefully reviewed the current post by the Mod, and found it to barely skirt the prohibited Political content (no IDing or blaming of specific parties or politicians and it was cordial), but it was off-topic where it was. Fairness would have indicated that it needed to be deleted by the poster, as I had required of all the other three, but that Mod refused.

In my opinion all 4 posts were seriously off-topic where they were. The two who were most troublesome, have been trying to pounce on marginal digressions into CV-19 fears being expressed, and labeling them as political speech in order to start a fight. I would have preferred to talk the Mod into removing her post voluntarily, but that did not happen, and she correctly pointed out that she had not violated the actual terms of allowed political speech, but it was off-topic.

I made sure that the COVID-19 Political Speech Allowed topic was clearly so designated in the topic, so that others could avoid it. I don't want my group to have no place where they can speak freely about their fears, or to give good advice concerning protective measure to take, or to vent. What I don't want is a nasty fight breaking out, every time the chiders pile on and self-designate posts by persons they dislike as "political speech" so they can zing this Mod and others.

What are your thoughts?

Solutions as I see them are:
1. To post a how-to Mute topics
2. Ignore them, or reject abusive posts
3. To let the chiders tell me how to Moderate, and remove the other Mod's borderline post

Thanks for your thoughts and any insight you can give.
Candice Massey, Mod and Co-Owner Fanciers

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 11:55 AM, Hazel Bargiel wrote:

As all the members have complete access to the Photos section, I'd like to remove the member's name that appears on some of the albums.? Is that possible?

Hazel -- A clumsy work-around is available.?Create an account under some unused email address, subscribe it to the group, and give it a Display Name of " " (a single space). Reassign all the albums to it (via "Edit Album") and you will have what you want.

Hope this helps,
Bruce

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On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 12:21 PM, Hazel Bargiel wrote:

So how come some of the albums have an owner's name and some don't?

If someone uploads content and subsequently leaves the group the Owner name of whatever they've left behind will be blank.

Bruce?

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So how come some of the albums have an owner's name and some don't?? ( I presume you can view my group.)? Was it because I created them before I designated the moderators and started sending out invitations?

Hazel

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 12:03 PM, Duane wrote:

The person that creates the album will always be shown as the owner.

Unless you change it, which, weirdly, you can do.

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 10:55 AM, Hazel Bargiel wrote:

I'd like to remove the member's name that appears on some of the albums.? Is that possible?

No.? The person that creates the album will always be shown as the owner.? BTW, if a member creates an album, they can set it to Personal so only they (and group owner/mods) can add photos.

Duane
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On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 04:22 AM, Shal Farley wrote:

the group's Reply To can be set to Sender. This ... means that by default member's replies will go to the Sender regardless of whether they reply on the web site or by email.

Unfortunately not true.?? Some MUAs (e.g. Thunderbird) make "reply to list" the default reply action to messages, even if the list is configured "Announce Only", "Reply To=Sender", and "Remove other reply options", i.e. replying to the list should is not supposed to be an option.

Mark thought he fixed this recently, but the problem remains, I think because messages include some hidden headers like "List-Post:" and "Mailing-List:" which include the posting email address.

? There's a thread on beta about this at https://beta.groups.io/g/main/topic/72075793

I've recently set up the Annaba Veterans private members' group with a view to collecting members' photos in various albums.? As all the members have complete access to the Photos section, I'd like to remove the member's name that appears on some of the albums.? Is that possible?
Thanks, Hazel

On 5/5/2020 04:24, Robert Oshel wrote:

It seems to me that free speech rights don't come into play here. This isn't a government-sponsored forum.? The owners of groups and Groups.IO can set limits on content.

The real issue is whether the comments were related to the stated purpose of the group and conformed to group expectation concerning content.? If the group was established to talk about computer programming, for example, then the comment about the administration's response to the pandemic doesn't appear to be relevant to the group and was objectionable because of that.? If the group was established to talk about health care, for example, then the comment was relevant.? It all depends on the nature of the group.

What was the group's purpose?

This is correct as you and Peter point out. In the US, there is no free speech requirement on private citizens or groups thereof.

And your last question is key. The groups I run are, in fact political. They belong to units of a particular US political party. In such groups, it is the reverse of Robert's example: a discussion of the administration's response would be on-topic and software programming would be off-topic. What's important is not the subject matter per se, but whether it corresponds to what the group is there to discuss.

Best,

Glenn

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On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 07:56 AM, Robert Oshel wrote:

This isn't a government-sponsored forum.

Btw, even government forums have the right to police content.

On Tue, May 5, 2020 at 07:56 AM, Robert Oshel wrote:

It seems to me that free speech rights don't come into play here.

You are correct. The first amendment - which I'm assuming is what we're referring to here - relates specifically to Congressional authority and nothing more. Like any other publisher (think Twitter, Facebook, etc.), we have the right to determine what is acceptable in our forums.?

For example, my neighborhood group's guidelines prohibit any discussion of political positions. So any such content is dealt with as a violation of the guidelines. Of course there are always gray areas, and we handle them on a case-by-case basis.?

I'm curious, Gesine: if this was reported to GIO, how did you find out about it?

Pete

On Mon, May 4, 2020 at 11:51 PM, Gesine wrote:

One member recently complained to groups.io about a post a moderator wrote

If it was reported to GIO and nothing was done, then management (Mark) doesn't find that it violates any terms.? At that point, just ignore it and move on.? I don't believe this was the case because, as far as I know, the group management is not notified of such reports.

If it was reported to your group managers, it's up to you to decide what, if anything, you want to do.? If it were me, I'd ignore it.? If the member that reported it chooses to reply to the topic with some (useful) contradictory information, I'd allow it.

Duane
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