Thanks everyone,
Christos, in answer to your question on why I don't want subgroup moderators to be able to add a member to the main group- we have a complicated setup in groups.io with many subgroups.?

If a person is direct added to the main group we also add them to 4-5 subgroups depending on requirements.? If a person is invited to a subgroup and automatically added to the main group, they don't get added to the other subgroups so are not added correctly.? If a person is already in the main group then adding to a different subgroup is fine.

I assign moderators to each subgroup based on their need to manage that subgroup. I definitely don't want all of them to be a moderator of the main group and have access to all subgroups. They each manage their subgroup(s) and don't stray into other subgroups.

It is basically a question of control and trying to limit the scope of a moderator. It is not that I think that anyone is going to knowingly screw things up - but we are all volunteers, and it can be very easy to do something by mistake.

Education sounds like my best plan - and watching the main group activity logs.
Many thanks everyone
Beth

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I have created a couple of subgroups. One of the moderators in a subgroup is a bit thoughtless, and sent an invitation (to join the subgroup) without my knowledge or consent

Hmm ... interestingly enough there was another instance recently (/g/GroupManagersForum/message/36192) where the same root problem, a subgroup mod inviting a member when they shouldn't be able to (if the main group admin didn't want them to), caused an unintended issue downstream.

I proposed a few solutions in that topic, the quick and easy "in subgroups, hide/disable the Invite option for all but the owners" solution would prevent stuff like this from happening.

Cheers,
Christos

Thank you, Bruce. I didn't think to start taking screenshots until I had deleted the guy.

I figured it out. I have created a couple of subgroups. One of the moderators in a subgroup is a bit thoughtless, and sent an invitation (to join the subgroup) without my knowledge or consent.So the other log entries are in the log for the subgroup, but the master membership record was added to the main group.

I think I'll make a suggestion to Mark, that when members are added to the main group because of activity originating within a subgroup, an entry should also be made in the main group's actvity log. When I thought to look at the subgroup I saw what had happpened pretty quickly. But I also saw that the member's deletion (by me) had not been logged in the subgroup's activity. That's also a little confusing.
--
David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
/

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 10:06 PM, David Bryant wrote:

His membership record said he had joined at 8:06 pm CST.

I don't see that in your screenshots.

I noticed him at 8:30 pm. I kicked him out once I was certain he didn't belong in my group (membership requires approval, and this guy was never approved). Here are two screenshots.

I'm rather befuddled as well. A few thoughts:
-- Those who transferred from a Yahoo group using the Easy Group Transfer mechanism will have no join entry in their activity log.
-- Could you (or a co-Owner) have accidentally changed group settings for awhile, thus allowing him to join without review?
-- Could you (or a co-Owner) have invited this person? Accepted invitations do not go into Pending status.
-- Could this person have joined under a different email address, and subsequently changed it themselves (or had a co-Owner change it)? To my knowledge, changing an account's email address -- or merging it with another -- does not generate a group log entry.
-- Generally, I've found the string search function in the activity log to be less than reliable. If you have a Premium group, you may have better luck looking at this person's log entries in your Past Members list (click on the Removed link to see it).

Some obscure combination of the above could perhaps cause what you've seen.?

Hope this helps,
Bruce

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On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 06:39 PM, Steve Stallings wrote:

When I renamed the group the web appearance and regular message formatting all changed as expected, but the welcome message when you join the group still has the old name and addresses.

Steve -- Renaming a group has a number of impacts that you may not have considered. See?/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/8127?for details.

Regards,
Bruce

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Something very strange just happened. I was reviewing the membership list when I noticed a member I had never approved. His membership record said he had joined at 8:06 pm CST. I noticed him at 8:30 pm. I kicked him out once I was certain he didn't belong in my group (membership requires approval, and this guy was never approved). Here are two screenshots.
?



Notice that there are no log entries showing when this guy joined my group. I keep careful track of my group's membership. There are currently 1,016 approved members in my group, and I can account for every one of them (offline records that I maintain). This guy was member #1,017 for about 20 minutes or so. How did he sneak in? Should I file a bug report?
--
David Bryant
Canyon Lake, Texas
/

It was under Admin > Settings but I did not realize that there were tabs beside Settings once you got to that page. Selecting the Notices tab did the trick.

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Beth,

>>> I want the mod to be able to add members to the subgroup but only if they are already members of the main group.
?
You'd like a system-enforced way of doing this in other words because a manual protocol-based way already exists (don't use Invite if you're a subgroup mod, only DirectAdd) in which case a beta #suggestion is your only option, based on current functionality.?

The problem exists because in the main group mod's settings, there is the "Invite Members" option which controls the display/enabling of the Invite option but only Owners see the DirectAdd option; in the subgroups however there's some inconsistency, there is no "Invite Members" setting but it's "replaced" with "Add Members", which now controls the subgroup display/enabling of both the DirectAdd (from main group) option (correct) and Invite option (not really correct if you think about it).? The way it works now may had made sense initially, before the subgroup and main membership requirement was introduced, and maybe it was an oversight/wasn't mentioned/anticipated at the time, I don't know.

The absolute quickest way to fix this would be to change the subgroup mod's "Add Members" text to say "Invite Members", as with the leaving the existing functionality that will remove the subgroup "Invite" option; but it would also remove the subgroup "DirectAdd" option which can make a subgroup mod less functional/capable overall, if they are also supposed to (direct)add members, so this would not be a good fix really.

The other very quick way to fix this with a 1-2 line of code change is to always hide/disable the "Invite" option for subgroups altogether for everyone but the owners.? This will bring the "Add Members" text closer to what may really be meant, i.e. "Add Members" really means "(Direct)Add (existing main group) Members (only)"; it will also move the main vs sub group functionality/behavior in that regard closer together.

Lastly, the most correct and granular but more work solution, add an "Invite Members" setting as well for subgroup mods below the "Add Members" setting, and adjust the display/enabling of "DirectAdd" and "Invite" options in subgroups based on these two settings.

Now regardless of the above, I wonder, why don't you want to allow the subgroup mod to invite folks to the subgroup?? If you think about it, in the end it's the same thing: whether a subgroup mod invited someone to a specific subgroup, or a main group mod invited a member (for the purposes of adding them to the subgroup) and then added them to the subgroup, the same end result in effect takes place, in both cases the member gets added to the subgroup and gets added to the main group by no choice, so why fight it?? So knowing that the Invite option is there for subgroup mods and cannot be turned off currently (without crippling the subgroup mod), and assuming you could allow the subgroup mod to invite people to the subgroup "only" since "might as well, same deal", Why not use something like the inelegant-can-work protocol-based solution below to accomplice this:

1. Add the subgroup mod to the main group mod pool as well (no need for notifs, etc), and in their main group mod settings, set only the "View Member List" option checked; possibly also set the "Set Member Subscription Options" setting as well, depending on...(*1)

2. Per protocol, before the subgroup mod sends the invitation from the subgroup, they check the main group member list to see if that email address is already a main group member, and:

- If Yes, no invite is sent but the subgroup mod just DirectAdds that member using the subgroup's DirectAdd option.

- If No, go ahead and send the invite from the subgroup; after the invitee accepts, in addition to any new-member tasks that now may already take place, the subgroup mod edits the invitee's main group subscription and sets it to "lurker" mode, again depending on (*1) -- or if as a matter of protocol you don't want them to do it in this case but leave it to a higher-privileged main group mod to handle it, then I guess the subgroup mod is only permitted to do as far as step 2-Yes and that's it.

Cheers,
Christos

(*1) I guess it would depend on what the default/minimum subscription option is on the main group; if None or Special, then no need for that second setting, but if anything higher (which would cause the new subgroup member to unwittingly also start getting main group messages), regardless of whether a main group mod adds a subgroup new member or a sub group mod invite-adds a subgroup new member, it shouldn't be up to the member to go and set their main group subscription to none/special (after all they didn't ask to be added to the main group); a mod should do that for them(*2) to make the subgroup-only invite addition seamless; now whether the capability and task of that is given to the subgroup mod, or no capability is given to them and they have to notify a more-privileged main group mod to do so for them, depends on your desired protocol.

(*2) this fact IMO should also be communicated to the new member so they know they were also added to the main group (cause no choice in that) but their main group subscription was set to None/whatever, just in case they may be interested in also engaging with the main group, in which case, they should also be reminded to now reset their main group subscription options themselves to their desired options.

When I renamed the group the web appearance and regular message formatting all changed as expected, but the welcome message when you join the group still has the old name and addresses. Maybe I am blind, but I cannot find a way to edit the welcome message.

Samuel,

Very impressive tad bit of work.? Even some of your well thought out assumptions are very plausible.?

When our group left Yahoo and came here, we opted to do the transfer ourselves.? Yahoo had 2,793 members over the 35+ years including GeoCities history.? IF we did a membership ADD to GroupsIO, those members may have been dead emails or even deceased people by upwards of 50%.? So, notices went out multiple times on Yahoo over various months and weeks before the FULL closure in 2020 over the entire year.?

Fast forward to today, we are still a healthy group with about 160+ members with no direct ADD.? A clean slate I must say.? This is prior to Mark's pricing program.?? Our community is averaging on good months over 100 messages and on weaker months just over 30.? Winter tends to be a popular time for posting as more people are indoors.

In your tabulations, our group does swing the median a tad with the spikes of members from the 150 to 160 range and the posted messages. ?

BMaverick

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 11:50 AM, Paula wrote:

Unfortunately the Google search result entry apparently shows "enough" of the deleted message to be of concern for this member.

Is there any way for a group admin (such as myself) to eliminate whatever is generating the Google each result showing this message?

See??for instructions on how to induce Google to re-crawl pages. Be advised that it will not happen immediately.

You can help mitigate recurrence of this problem by making your group's message archive private.?/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/customizing-group-settings/privacy-settings?

Regards,
Bruce?

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A member requested deletion of her messages from the group (I think it was prompted by a personal safety concern). We immediately deleted her posts.

Today she emailed saying that she Googled her name and found a reference to a deleted message appear in the Google search results. If one clicks on the Google result, you are taken to the group but the message of concern isn't shown; this also is true if you click for the cached version of the message.

Unfortunately the Google search result entry apparently shows "enough" of the deleted message to be of concern for this member.

Is there any way for a group admin (such as myself) to eliminate whatever is generating the Google each result showing this message? Or is this search entry the result of Google's search engine picking up the message before it was deleted, and there's nothing we can do at the group end to remove this search result?

Thanks for any help.

Paula

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 10:56 AM, WBennett wrote:

I see that there hasn't been any improvement in the "deleting photos from the Emailed Photos folder" function.
I've just done about 20 and gave up because it STILL is selecting the next or previous photo, instead of the one I click on.

Browsers will often serve the thumbnail images from your local cache instead of the site. For this reason you have to refresh the thumbnail page between deletions.

See?/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/7120?for full instructions.

Regards,
Bruce

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I see that there hasn't been any improvement in the "deleting photos from the Emailed Photos folder" function.
I've just done about 20 and gave up because it STILL is selecting the next or previous photo, instead of the one I click on.
When I wrote previously (some time last year) I was given some tips on how to go back to the original page after deleting and I had kept those emails in my mail program, however Thunderbird decided to throw a fit one day and totally wiped a couple of my sub folders from both my computer and my IMAP web mail, so I had no way of getting them again.
Could you please give me a link to any help file regarding this problem?
I'm in the process of searching the archived messages but haven't yet found what I want, thought it would be quicker to ask again... lol
Many thanks.
Win

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 12:40 PM, Beth Weld wrote:

I want the mod to be able to add members to the subgroup but only if they are already members of the main group. It sounds like I can't do that

No and that's because the Add Members permission for a Mod in a subgroup also opens up the Invite option.? If they were separate permissions you could grant the Add (which allows adding of main group members) without giving Invite also.

Regards
Andy

On Tue, Jan 5, 2021 at 12:06 AM, <alee@...> wrote:

Here is the issue, some members are active, some are not, and seeing if there is an easy way to trim the non-active members each year by asking them to re-authenticate when they post, a script by which I can do this with an API, or if there is a function I am not aware of?

If you have a list of members recorded elsewhere (an Excel spreadsheet or whatever), you can use one of the member sync functions on a periodic basis. Instructions beginning at?/helpcenter/ownersmanual/1/managing-members/syncing-group-members-with-slack-teams?single=true?

If you have a Premium/Enterprise group, syncing can be accomplished by uploading a file containing the member information, one entry per line. Basic groups can only sync with a Slack team (I do not have experience with Slack teams).

Hope this helps,
Bruce

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On 07/01/2021 13:25, Beth Weld wrote:

I want the mod to be able to add members to the subgroup but only if they are already members of the main group.

This sounds sensible to me. If someone is a member of the main group, it means that they have already passed some form of vetting.

I'd actually like to be able to turn of the Invitations feature for the main group and all subgroups, but that is a bit granular for the suggestion box in Beta.

Well, one alternative is to disable invitation permissions for the subgroup moderators but to create a template that moderators can send directly to invitees via their personal e-mail, that essentially tells the recipient how to join.

This is not a true "invitation" since the recipient would still have to do something manually in order to join, but it can be made to contain information that would otherwise be sent to people who get invited.

It does not appear to be possible for moderators to send messages or noticed to non-members via Groups.io, so the subgroup moderator would have to send the customized template via his own personal e-mail.

Samuel

On Thu, Jan 7, 2021 at 12:40 PM, Beth Weld wrote:

I'd actually like to be able to turn of the Invitations feature for the main group and all subgroups, but that is a bit granular for the suggestion box in Beta.

No need to go anywhere near beta; just turn off Moderators' ability to invite or add new members.

Chris

Thanks everyone,
I want the mod to be able to add members to the subgroup but only if they are already members of the main group. It sounds like I can't do that, and I think I vaguely remember the discussions about the duplicate invitations.? Back to the drawing board. I'd actually like to be able to turn of the Invitations feature for the main group and all subgroups, but that is a bit granular for the suggestion box in Beta.
Thanks again
Beth

On 06/01/2021 21:00, Bruce Bowman wrote:

[Edited Message Follows]
[Reason: I got "median" (middle value) mixed up with "mode" (most common value). Sorry.]

In almost all of my analyses, the mode is always the lowest number. So, for groups with 11-1000 members, the mode is 11. This statistic simply tells us that groups have lower numbers before they have higher numbers, which is perfectly logical and should be unsurprising since 99% of groups start at 0 members and then grow from there :-) :-)

I'm not even sure if median is a useful thing to look at here. The issue that I raised that resulted in this sub-thread is not whether Mark's model is profitable, but whether Mark's model is ideal for the types of [idealistic?] groups that I was thinking of.

Samuel