On Wed, Oct 11, 2017 at 09:37 am, Shal Farley wrote:

we probably want to get the conversation into beta@ sufficiently in advance of
November 1st

I considered that, but Mark has said he's pretty deep in getting the search updated right now. How about Friday morning so maybe he'll notice and can think about it over the weekend?

Duane

Duane,

Here's the text of the message I plan to post on beta@. Let me know
if there are adjustments that should be made.

Looks like a good summary of our conversation to me.

I'll wait until at least Monday to post it over there.

I don't see a need to wait that long.

I think we've had ample discussion, and we probably want to get the conversation into beta@ sufficiently in advance of November 1st to give time for discussion there and for Mark to think about it and/or work on it.

Shal

Here's the text of the message I plan to post on beta@. Let me know if there are adjustments that should be made. I'll wait until at least Monday to post it over there.

----------
On GMF, we've been having a discussion about the new Group Guidelines notice that was sent for the first time on 1 October. There are some tweaks that we feel would be useful and appreciated.

1. The group Subject Tag wasn't added to the subject line of the email. When sent directly to a member by a moderator, it is.
1A. One suggestion was to have the monthly go out with its Subject line (including Subject/group tag & hashtag), but when you elect to send it to one or more members, pre-fill the Subject line on that message composition with just the Subject (no group tag or hashtag)
2. The notice isn't sent to the group archives. While those online can easily click the tab on the left, having it be treated more like a regular post would bring the guidelines to the attention of those members. It should also create an entry in the activity log, which was missing.
3. A system hashtag, possibly #Guidelines, added to the Subject would be appropriate. If this hashtag were set by default to delete the thread after one month, that would prevent having multiple copies of (possibly different) guidelines in the archive.
3A. Possibly have a second hashtag that is used only when sent to those joining a group ("Send on join"), maybe #NewMember.

There was also quite a discussion of the Subject/title of the notice. Apparently some of those that received them thought they were being singled out. We've discovered that we can change this to fit our needs, so the default of 'Group Guidelines' is a good neutral starting place. Having a separate notice Subject, one under the "Send on join" checkbox and one under the "Send monthly" box would be the optimum option.

----------

Thanks,
Duane

Bob,

3. Same member unsubscribes before msgs approved at about 5pm today
4. Moderator looks at email after 5pm today - and the 2 msgs had
disappear from the online pending queue

I was puzzled by a similar circumstance with a member who was unexpectedly (by either the member or by me) unsubscribed recently.

Why does this happen
Also it would seem incorrect to me.

The point could be argued, but the logic may be that once the sender is no longer a member then they are no longer entitled to post in the group. There's then no point in wasting the group admins' time with any pending message from that member.

A counter point of view is that the person _was_ a member at the time sent, and so it should be the admin's choice about posting the (former) member's message(s). But of course, the mod may not be aware at that point that the member had left the group.

Shal

Bob,

From the screenshot:

Reason
550 Verification failed for <[email protected]>
The account or domain may not exist, they may be blacklisted,
or missing the proper dns entries. Sender verify failed.

This means that the member's email service attempted to verify the Return-Path field in the message, and for some reason that failed.

Ordinarily the Return-Path field is only used to report a bounce (and in fact must have been used to make that very report!), but it seems that this email service is doing something to verify the Return-Path before deciding whether to accept or reject this message. I don't know enough about email systems to know if testing the Return-Path is a common anti-spam technique or not.

I'd cite this member's situation to [email protected] and see what they have to say. Include the screen shot in your message - that should provide some amusement/consternation for Mark.

The statement "they may be blacklisted" is worrysome - it implies that the email service may be using an RBL or similar service; FWIW I have a very low opinion of the accuracy of those services.


In my opinion, if the member's email service is in fact using such a service to decide when to reject ("bounce") messages then there is no hope of ever having reliable delivery to that service. If that matters to him/her then the member should choose a different email service.

Shal

The sequence below left me with a puzzle

1. Moderated member posts two msgs at about 2:30pm today
2. Same two msgs appear on "moderated email to be approved queue" with same date/time prior to next step
3. Same member unsubscribes before msgs approved at about 5pm today
4. Moderator looks at email after 5pm today - and the? 2 msgs had disappear from the online pending queue
5. All of the above shows in the activity logs.

Why does this happen?
Also it would seem incorrect to me.
--
Bob Bellizzi

The Corneal Dystrophy Foundation

The only way to both lock a thread and delete its content (or delete any message within it) is what I described in an earlier thread: you have to redact all the content of every message in the thread (or every message you want to delete). Then you can put whatever text you want into the last message.

The reason I didn't do it that way today was (a) it would have been a PITA (very long thread) and (b) more honestly, I forgot lol. So then I needed a workaround. Since the workaround so easy and turned out to be so successful (even though it lasts only about a week, which was all I needed), I wanted to let people here know about it.
--
J
(Please note: I prefer not to be contacted offlist.)

Thanks. My browser had apparently got itself into a snit. All is well now after I cleared the cache. :)
--
J
(Please note: I prefer not to be contacted offlist.)

J_Catlady, no problems here.?

Frances

IIRC in the past the blocking filter was your primary spam filter, eventually replaced by newer Spam filters. You can't access it from an app, you have to use a browser. It is not all that hard to look find but if you're like me I forgot it was still there!

Oops. No, it wouldn’t work. Once you delete a message, people can still reply to it via email and get around the locking. That’s the whole point.

Sent from my iPhone

That would work, too.

Sent from my iPhone

What about just deleting all the messages in the thread, except for one with your reason, then locking it? Seems like that should work indefinitely.

Duane

Bob,

1. Don’t get all messages, some they never see.

You should be able to learn something by looking the address up in your Members list and seeing what their Email Delivery History tab has to say. See my reply to Bruce in this thread.

A likely cause is some type of spam or block filter in the member's email service. Members having spotty reception should make sure that neither the group posting address nor any fellow-members' email addresses are in a block list. And of course they should check their Spam or Junk folder and mark as "Not Spam" any group messages they may find there.

2. Are experiencing bounces, but most messages get through.

Are you referring to bounces reported in their Email Delivery History (or the group's activity log), or do you mean that their inbound posts are getting bounced back to them?

If the former, again they need to check for any block filters that they may have in their email system. Or, they need to contact their email service and ask the postmaster (or customer care, or support, whatever they call it) about the meaning and cure for the bounce messages listed in their Email Delivery History.

If the latter they need to resolve whatever issue was reported in the bounce notice. If they need help understanding the bounce message we might be able to help, or at worst they can report the bounce text to [email protected] for assistance.

Shal

This may only work for some limited time. I'm not sure what that time frame may be. We often get posts with the exact same title a week or two apart and they (correctly) start a new thread. You might try responding to the email from your deleted thread after several days to see if it still rejects the message. This could happen since a new topic/post will have a different ID than the original.

Duane

开云体育

For anyone interested, I found a way to both delete a thread/topic and also lock it. Normally, if you delete a thread, or any message contained in it, prior locking will fail if someone still responds to the corresponding email message, since groups.io can't connect the email to the non-existent thread or message and know that it's supposed to be locked. And of course, you can't lock a deleted thread since it is no longer there. So here's what you can do:

1. delete the topic
2. start a new topic with the *exact same title* as the deleted thread, and write "this thread has been deleted" (or words to that effect) in the message body.
3. lock the new topic

I tested this out on the theory that since groups.io now does threading by title matching, a new thread with the same title would make groups.io think it was the same as the old one, and it worked. Any replies to emails from the old (deleted) thread will still bounce, with reason "this topic has been locked by the moderators and can no longer be posted to."

FWIW.

J

Kevin,

I found that Yahoo has an old legacy blocking filter. Somehow an
address got onto that list and then all messages from said address
were being accepted (thus no bounce) but not being received and not
appearing in either the spam or trash folders. They just simply
disappeared into the ether until the address was removed from
blocking filter!

That could be a problem with other email services as well. Some have a "block" or "blacklist" feature that is separate from either the spam filtering or the normal user filters.

When you say "legacy" do you mean that you had to find it in an unusual place in the user interface, somewhere a user wouldn't ordinarily look for filters or spam controls? My ISP email has one like that, a block list that predates the rollout of their current webmail interface (and a content-based spam filter). You have to go to a legacy configuration page to see it, it isn't in the webmail options page.

Shal