I have that disabled for my groups. You are only allowed to post to the group on the website, you may not reply to all, or do a private reply. Now in the email interface you can as you can see the people who are in the thread. This actually came in handy as someone forgot to put their email in the mesage and I needed to write to them to get a voiceover script to work on this weekend for a project they need by Sunday so that came in handy. But no, if you are using the website like a forum, all other options are disabled. As I want to see everybody who replies.

Take care and have a happy wednesday

开云体育

If you mean the footer, you can actually type in custom text in the settings under ?under your group, then admin, then settings. I just modified my android list to list resources people could use. For an example look at the group in my sig, although I'm not sure if the new footer will show up on the older messages.?Doubt it. Oh well. I hope one is there for people to see.

Hello

I am looking to move several announcement groups from Yahoo to here. These are mostly e-mail announcement lists, with a couple as discussion groups.
The members of the groups are not particularly computer literate, so I am trying to make everything very simple for them, with the minimum of jargon and irrelevant options that confuse them.

I was pleased to see that most of groups.io's messages can be customised. However, I have not been able to find a way to change the text at the bottom of every message:

Groups.io Links:

You receive all messages sent to this group.

| Reply To Sender | Reply To Group | Mute This Topic |

Contact Group Owner
Terms Of Service

For announcement groups, all of these are irrelevant except:
Reply to Sender (and this is not really necessary as they can reply to the e-mail)
Unsubscribe from group
Contact group owner (perhaps - again, they could just reply to the e-mail)

Is there a way to change the text added to the bottom of messages?

A second question relates to accepting an invitation. There appear to be two options. One is to reply to the message. The other is to accept it on the web site.

On the web site, people are presented with a big page and lots of options. Most of my members would not have a clue what most of them mean, and would probably not click any of them out of confusion.

Is it possible to have a link which just adds them to the group with All Messages instead of giving them all these options.

Thanks

Richard,

... (unless there is a private messaging facility, which groups.io
sadly lacks ...

There is, sort-of, for a loose meaning of the word private.

If you click on Reply under a member's post there is a "Private" button over to the right. Clicking that will change a default "Reply to Group" into a "Reply to Sender".

A member can use that without knowledge of the other member's email address, but one caveat and one loophole:

1) The replying member's email address is exposed in the From field of the message sent to the original poster. Same as it would have been in a group message. With an anonymity feature I'd have to assume some other address would be there.

2) The loophole: if the replying member checks the "BCC me" box, the BCC they get will expose the original poster's email address in the To field. With an anonymity feature I think the BCC field would need to be used for both addressees, to avoid revealing the original poster's email address to the replying member.

... though I'd be very surprised if it hasn't been discussed
extensively before).

Right you are, it was extensively discussed in beta@.

Shal

开云体育

Not meaning to undermine you group here, but have you checked out Nextdoor? The specialize in neighborhood (geographically defined) groups. One cannot be anonymous there either.


I only mention them because Gordon Strause, former Product Manager for Yahoo Groups, went to Nextdoor when he left Yahoo. In my opinion he was one of the "good guys" from YG's golden age. And I like what they've done over at Nextdoor.

When NextDoor started someone called me repeatedly to get me to join. I didn’t for several reasons. They were pushing security and guaranteeing that no one would be on the list unless they were guaranteed to be real neighbors. They had the neighborhoods drawn by their own definitions, which doesn’t work because people form their own neighborhoods. Some people are on our list to keep in touch but they live elsewhere now. Some relate to this neighborhood more than an adjacent one so they are on our list. We don’t restrict membership, only the topics —we don’t discuss politics in other neighborhoods, for example. We don’t list classes in other neighborhoods unless a member specifically wants to recommend them.

So the lack of democracy and the narrowness of the focus are uninteresting to me. I also felt that the narrowness of focus is really so they can market more specifically. It just gives the marketing people more information on demographics and changing demographics over time. It felt like another commercial guinea pig opportunity.

Aside from an excellent and continually improving service, what I like about Groups.io is that it has a business plan based on providing services, not on selling information or tacking on ads everywhere.

As a provider, that makes Groups.io more attractive because it has the features a group might need as it grows. The features are there if we need them. In addition to horror stories about Yahoo, there are stories about Google. My cohousing community started a wiki on GoogleSites to keep track of facilities issues. It was a huge success with members loving it who didn’t even like email, much less use computers. People in their 70s with no online experience would enter information frequently about HVAC repairs, serial numbers, warranties, reports from service people —on everything.

Then comes the little known fact — sites are limited to 1MB of information. We are at 99%, there is no ability to buy more storage, and no ability to easily transfer the information elsewhere — like to Groups.io. We will have to move all the minutes of meetings to our website to make room for the chronological recordings of wiki info. Bad because now people have to search in two places to be sure to have all the information.

So I’m leery of a lot of "free” online stuff.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
Takoma Village Cohousing, Washington DC

On Tue, Nov 21, 2017 at 05:00 am, Richard L King wrote:

I'll add my wish list of things I'd like to see in groups.io related to this thread:

I think this is so comprehensive and straightforward that you should repeat this wishlist to the beta group, which is the place for new feature suggestions. Some of these have been discussed there ad infinitum and some are even on the Trello todo list. If you do that, I (and probably others) will comment there on the individual items. For example, #4 is something I broached long ago and I believe is on the Todo list. A version of #1 (which was going by the name of "Private Groups" for awhile in the beta group - you can search on it) was also discussed ad infinitum, and Mark was even working on implementing it as an option for enterprise groups at one point (except for the option for group owners not to have access to the info - doubt you would get very many takers there). Etc.
?
--
J

Shal

Sorry, I didn't intend to add any more to this topic but I just want to clarify something that was a misunderstanding on my part.

I am (and always was) perfectly happy with the distinction between the member list and the member directory, and with the fig-leafing of email addresses. But one thing that caught my attention was your statement in message #2626 that

the Member list includes member's subscription information, and in particular shows their email addresses.
I suspect most groups would restrict this list to moderators for privacy reasons.

On initial reading this seemed to me to be an overstatement, but re-reading it, I realise that you're not suggesting that the distinction between the lists is a privacy feature per se, but simply that not making the member list accessible to all is a useful privacy practice in many groups, which I entirely agree with.

Just for the record, I'll add my wish list of things I'd like to see in groups.io related to this thread:

1. Members to be able to state in their profile that they wish to remain anonymous, meaning that other members (even moderators and owners) cannot discover their email address by any means. [I realise of course that there will always be some people who have complete access to everything, particularly those who run and maintain the databases, but they are not normal members and one has to presume that they are trustworthy.]

2. A group-level policy option that all members are to remain anonymous in this way.

3. A means for members to contact other members privately without needing to know their email address.

4. A means for members to declare that they do not want to be contacted privately under any circumstances.

5. Overriding 4, a means for moderators to contact members regardless of their preference, again without needing to know the member's email address.

Having said that, with 40+ years of professional software development under my belt, I'm well aware of the difficulties of keeping a very large and diverse user base happy and prioritising their enhancement requests, and also of the effort involved in such developments. I have to say Mark and his team have done a brilliant job so far (I presume he does have at least a small team? If not I'm even more impressed!).

Richard

My list that had 33,000 members when it was on Yahoo was a technical support group for an online broker's application programming interface: this is something that enables people to develop financial trading software (both personal and corporate). It is of huge interest to people around the globe.

I've never met a single person from that list (and probably never will), I know nothing about them except what comes across in their posts (which of course reveals a lot about them in general terms!), for the most part I have no idea where they live, and in general I have absolutely no reason to need their email addresses.

However there are occasions where people want to contact each other off list, for example further to discuss an issue that has arisen that's off topic for the list itself, and this can be tricky in a list where people can hide (unless there is a private messaging facility, which groups.io sadly lacks - though I'd be very surprised if it hasn't been discussed extensively before).

Richard

On Mon, Nov 20, 2017 at 04:47 pm, Sharon Villines wrote:

I can’t imagine a list with anonymous members posting.

Having been through similar discussions (debates?;) ad infinitum in the beta group over the past 1+ years, it's become more and more clear to me how idiosyncratic these preferences are. On one end, you have people and groups who would sell their souls to hide their email addresses. On the other you have people who insist on complete personal info from group members. Everyone feels very strongly about their point of view, without exception. I personally happen to fall somewhere in the middle. It's not important, but I personally would never use my real email address in a group such as the one I host, would never expect my group members to use theirs, and am always surprised that some of them do. But that's me. There is every possible variation to this and every possible extreme. That's why Mark finally (after a LONG, and very heated debate) agreed to make figleafing of email addresses a group option. He still has not done it and I have no idea why not and these discussions continue to come up like Groundhog Day.?
?
--
J

Sharon,

I can’t imagine a list with anonymous members posting.

I think it is entirely a question of the nature of the group.

For some types of help groups I think it would be entirely appropriate to allow (or even require) anonymity. For my classmate groups it would be pointless to do so. And it sounds like in your neighborhood group it could even be harmful.

have a 3,000 member neighborhood list and it starts a big row if
people don’t sign their emails and indicate the street on which they
live. (We have government agency posters who list titles and offices.)

Not meaning to undermine you group here, but have you checked out Nextdoor? The specialize in neighborhood (geographically defined) groups. One cannot be anonymous there either.


I only mention them because Gordon Strause, former Product Manager for Yahoo Groups, went to Nextdoor when he left Yahoo. In my opinion he was one of the "good guys" from YG's golden age. And I like what they've done over at Nextdoor.

Shal

Richard,

I understand everything you say, and where you're coming from, but as
things stand I really don't think the distinction between the member
list and the directory can be considered a privacy feature.

I don't think it is, primarily. I think the two features come from different needs.

The Members list comes about from the list admin's need to have a comprehensive list of the membership, with access to information about the members and controls for their subscription. That it can be shown to members is a bonus.

The Members Directory comes about from a request that members be allowed to share profile information with one another. Another distinction between them is that when a member views the Directory, the member does not necessarily see a list of all other members - only those who've chosen no share at least some profile info are shown.

I also don't accept that other email-based lists' inability to hide
members' email addresses from email recipients is any reason why
groups.io shouldn't do better if it can.

I agree with you, and have done what I can to move the idea forward.

... so I'm happy just to leave it at that rather than continue to
debate this. But it will continue to niggle me...

Hey, those niggling thoughts are sometimes where great ideas come from. I say nurture them. It might not hurt to bump this topic over in the beta@ group with a fresh perspective.

Not that Mark doesn't have plenty on his plate already. ;-)

Shal

I can’t imagine a list with anonymous members posting. I have a 3,000 member neighborhood list and it starts a big row if people don’t sign their emails and indicate the street on which they live. (We have government agency posters who list titles and offices.)

I think if people want to lurk, that’s fine, but if they post we should know who is posting. Many members have been living here for 40 years and know everyone. If someone sets up a gmail address and starts posting things as Patsy on 5th, it doesn’t last long. Particularly if they are snarky or endorsing political candidates.

Sharon
----
Sharon Villines
[email protected]

Shal

I understand everything you say, and where you're coming from, but as things stand I really don't think the distinction between the member list and the directory can be considered a privacy feature.

I also don't accept that other email-based lists' inability to hide members' email addresses from email recipients is any reason why groups.io shouldn't do better if it can. Many list servers are donkeys years old, from a different world where people were much less concerned about privacy invasion, identity theft and so on. I would suggest that in this era, anything that can (cost effectively) be done to reduce unnecessary leakage of personal information is worth considering. I wish I could say that users who are concerned about this are worried about nothing, but I can't justify such a position.

Anyway, I've made my point and clearly it's not one that seems to carry much weight, so I'm happy just to leave it at that rather than continue to debate this. But it will continue to niggle me...

J,

Speaking of the truncation (aka fig-leafing), Mark has promised
repeatedly that this will be made optional per group (I don't want it
in my group).

You can turn it off in your group if you don't mind allowing members to see the Members list. I've done that in my classmate groups. I think that's relatively safe on groups with restricted (and carefully vetted) membership.

In doing that one does run the risk of accidentally approving a member who turns out to be a malcontent, spammer or even a crook; who then takes a copy of the members list. Use your own best judgement for this decision.

Shal

Richard,

... one of my groups had 33,000 members when it was at Yahoo, but only
7,000 were transferred to groups.io, and I could only assume that the
others were all anonymous members with no declared email address.

Or members on bouncing status. Those too do not transfer over.

Shal

Richard,

... on the other hand, this is completely blown out of the water by
the fact that everyone who receives posts by email can see every
poster's email address ...

That's basically in the nature of email lists (as opposed to online fora). There are ways around it, but most email lists operate with the sender's From: address forwarded in the clear.

The theory behind the truncation on the web site is that a spammer can't just join a group and scrape everyone's email addresses out of the archive. They would have to lurk and receive messages for some time - and historically spammers haven't shown that kind of patience.

Having members' email addresses in each other's mail folders, and possibly address books, does represent some vulnerability to compromised email accounts, but generally this has been seen as a much lower probability of exposure than just scraping them out of the group's site.

But the thing is, there is really no reason for your email address to
have been included in the message headers in the first place, since
it's not required for the message to be delivered to me.

That's true.

And as I mentioned in my prior reply a variety of proposals for how Groups.io might handle this have been discussed in beta@ in the past. But for now Groups.io operates within the tradition of email lists, which makes sense given Groups.io's origins.

Of course there may be other considerations that would make such a
proposal unfeasible (for example the SMTP RFCs may specify that the
original headers must be preserved exactly when a message is
distributed to a mailing list, ...

I don't think there's anything to prohibit a service like Groups.io generating the outbound messages with completely replaced headers, as if the message originated at Groups.io - basically making messages posted by email equivalent to those posted on site.

Yahoo Groups' feature to allow members to hide their email address does this in a rather direct (and unnecessarily draconian) way: members who choose to hide cannot post by email, they must post on site. That's one of the reasons I don't use that feature myself.

I think I might put an explicit statement in my groups' descriptions
and welcome messages that brings attention to this situation.

That's probably a good idea, especially if your group members largely haven't participated in conventional email lists, or Yahoo Groups which do not allow members the ability to hide (my impression is that the overwhelming majority do not allow it - it isn't the default).

Shal

I don't think what you say is entirely true.

Before I moved my groups from Yahoo, there were many instances of members who had no declared email address at all, but were perfectly able to post.

This was occasionally a problem, especially in the case of a couple of rather abusive members whom I wanted to send private warnings to (I don't like publicly shaming people), but there was no way to contact them. In fact one of my groups had 33,000 members when it was at Yahoo, but only 7,000 were transferred to groups.io, and I could only assume that the others were all anonymous members with no declared email address.

Shal (and others who responded, for which thanks)

I think what concerns me here is that on the one hand, there is this
distinction between the member directory and member list (which of course
was the starting point for this thread), and you made the point, Shal, that 'I suspect most groups would restrict this list to moderators for privacy reasons'; on the other hand, this is completely blown out of the water by the fact that everyone who receives posts by email can see every poster's email address (admittedly they can't browse through the list but that's rather beside the point).

Now personally I have no problem with people knowing my email address (and indeed I use the same email address for all my online memberships, and I always use my real name everywhere - except Github which was a historical accident). And I think a group should be able to allow its members to see email address information if that's what the group wants, as in Sarah's case.

But where members want their email address privacy respected, it seems disingenuous to merely make the member list inaccessible when anyone who is an email-based user can see the originator's address in every post received. What's more, non-email based users probably assume that their address is indeed properly private because they never see full email addresses as a result of the fig-leafing.

I realise that when an email-based user replies, it's their email client that generates the preface to a quoted message, but what it generates is based entirely on what's in the headers of the message being replied to. Thus for this reply, Outlook generated ' From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Shal Farley', but had you not had a display name it would have inserted your email address. But the thing is, there is really no reason for your email address to have been included in the message headers in the first place, since it's not required for the message to be delivered to me. For example, the 'From:' header could say

From: "Shal Farley" < [email protected] >

rather than including your email address; and for john.doe@... who doesn't have a display name it could say

From: "john.doe@" < [email protected] >

This wouldn't affect delivery of the message but would obviate the need for the sender's email address to ever be visible to recipients. It could then be a group policy decision or perhaps individual option whether to use this scheme or stick with the current approach.

Of course there may be other considerations that would make such a proposal unfeasible (for example the SMTP RFCs may specify that the original headers must be preserved exactly when a message is distributed to a mailing list, which is why I mentioned standards in my earlier post), and if that's the way it is then there's really nothing further that can be done. But I'm hoping that something along these lines might be possible.

By the way, I only dragged this whole issue up again because a member of one of my groups was complaining when another member who responded to one of his posts addressed him using the 'fig leaf' rather than his display name, after which he cottoned on to the fact that his email address was visible to all email-based members - he had thought no-one could see it at all.

I think I might put an explicit statement in my groups' descriptions and welcome messages that brings attention to this situation.

Richard