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On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 03:13 PM, Ilana DeBare wrote:

it sounds like I should do two things for spam prevention:

1. In my welcome message, ask everyone to add the groups.io email to their list of contacts.?

For the avoidance of doubt... the "list of contacts" has to be in the mail provider's contact list, not that in an email client.

FWIW my ISP "improved" its email interface with the result that it no longer offered the ability to turn spam filtering off which was a quick and easy way of stopping things being shunted off to a place I could not see unless I went out of my way to find it. As a result I had to load a batch of Groups.io addresses into my service provider's contact list. Theoretically the provider's filtering should have been responsive to my marking messages as Not Spam but it didn't take long for me to realise that it simply ignored this so the only solution was to add a list of Groups.io addresses.

As others have said Groups.io is not the bad guy in all this.

Chris

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 11:08 AM, Peter Cook wrote:

I may be misinterpreting what you're saying but In my groups, yahoo addresses represent 35% of the removal-for-spam incidents.

Ironic, isn't it?

Lots of people still have Yahoo Mail accounts because for awhile you *had* to...in order to subscribe to Yahoo Groups. Now that many Yahoo Groups have migrated to groups.io, Yahoo Mail accounts are disproportionately represented among groups.io subscribers.

But I think Duane was talking about Yahoo Groups and Google Groups here, not Yahoo and Google as email providers. Those two listservs (or whatever you want to call them) were "too big to fail," and can thus better afford to ignore incoming FBL notifications. The ironic part is that while Yahoo Groups didn't react to FBL reports (that I've ever noticed), Yahoo Mail/Verizon does nonetheless send them.

Clearly, groups.io is not yet in this position. About once a month its IP address lands on someone's blacklist, and all mail to affected domains gets rejected. The most recent one was AT&T/prodiogy/sbcglobal, only 10 days ago (Ref:?).

Mark continues to work on this as best he can, but as long as such things continue to occur we're kinda stuck with where we are now. To the extent that all of us head off any false spam reports -- and complain to our own email providers when their algorithms fail to work properly -- we can actually help him to build the reputation that others already have.

Regards,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:08 AM, Peter Cook wrote:

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 09:37 AM, Duane wrote:

The "big fish" like Yahoo and Google don't get blocked very often, if at all.

Duane, I may be misinterpreting what you're saying but In my groups, yahoo addresses represent 35% of the removal-for-spam incidents.

Yeah, I should have stated that more clearly.? GIO honors the FBL and will remove people.? Yahoo and Google (the big fish) don't honor the FBL as far as I can tell, so won't kick people off.? GIO needs to build a reputation as a service while the others already have one built.

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 09:37 AM, Duane wrote:

The "big fish" like Yahoo and Google don't get blocked very often, if at all.

Duane, I may be misinterpreting what you're saying but In my groups, yahoo addresses represent 35% of the removal-for-spam incidents.

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 09:37 AM, Duane wrote:

If they're the only owner, they shouldn't lose access, but it's not something I want to test. ;>)

I have tested it, using a disposable group, and the last Owner is never kicked off, by this mechanism or otherwise. He can't even unsubscribe on purpose, or delete his own account, without first making someone else an Owner. At least that's the way it was when I did the testing (about a year ago).
?
Regards,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:13 AM, Ilana DeBare wrote:

it sounds like I should do two things for spam prevention:

1. In my welcome message, ask everyone to add the groups.io email to their list of contacts.?
2. If messages go to their spam folder, tell them to unmark one or two as “not junk mail”.

Is that enough to make sure messages go to their inboxes and not the spam graveyard?

Ilana -- Providers are getting more and more aggressive with spam filtering, and the complete elimination of "false positives" is probably not an achievable goal.?While the above actions have been shown to help, my own experience suggest that there is nothing that can be done to "make sure" messages make it to people's inboxes. I can't even get my own provider to send desired emails to my inbox each and every time.

I do suggest you be proactive, and notify folks that this might happen and make clear what they need to do if it does. Having passed that along, hopefully they will simply click the link in the follow-up email to restore their access without a bunch of fuss.

Two things that are important to understand:
1. Many email providers do not employ the feedback loop mechanism, and a message inadvertently sent to spam by those providers will not trigger an unsubscription. It will simply be lost.
2. Subscribers do sometimes mark an incoming message as spam instead of attempting to figure out how to unsubscribe. In such cases, getting kicked off is not a "problem," but a feature.

I usually try to follow up with people who get booted, just to make sure they understand what's going on. About half the time, I discover that they did it intentionally, and the FBL mechanism worked exactly the way it was supposed to.

For those who are really interested, the entry found at??provides a remarkably good [for Wikipedia] overview of all this.

Regards,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:21 AM, michael zaken wrote:

Our group the “Pennsylvania Council of the Blind” has finally gotten frustrated with Yahoogroups and we have decided to migrate over to Groups.io.

We have a number of groups in yahoogroups which include a large number of members.

Is there any simple instructions to do this migration.

Michael -- A 'quick start' guide for setting up a group can be found at?/helpcenter/gettingstarted. It's still in something of a draft form but is nonetheless fairly complete.?

Group members can be migrated to the new group according to the instructions found at?/g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/15860. The hardest part will probably be getting a list of existing group members. Unfortunately, there is no way to retrieve old content (files/photos/messages) ever since Yahoo's "getmydata" download function went offline back in February.?

Hope this helps,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

So I’m a new group owner just launching my first group and want to keep members’ incoming groups.io messages from being treated as spam!

it sounds like I should do two things for spam prevention:

1. In my welcome message, ask everyone to add the groups.io email to their list of contacts.?

2. If messages go to their spam folder, tell them to unmark one or two as “not junk mail”.

Is that enough to make sure messages go to their inboxes and not the spam graveyard?

ilana

On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 08:28 AM, isis feral wrote:

I've not seen the message the removed member gets, so I don't know if that's already included.

Check out /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki/5115

What if this happens to a moderator or owner of a group? Could an owner be removed without warning like this, and potentially lose access to their group?

If they're the only owner, they shouldn't lose access, but it's not something I want to test. ;>)? If you have another email address, you could make it an owner as back up, just in case.

More and more email providers are going to this setup.? It's rather ironic (to me) that Yahoo is one of the 'problem' services, but they don't seem to honor the FBL.? Part of the difficulty is that GIO is a "small fish" for email lists, so the email services don't mind blocking them for whatever reason.? The "big fish" like Yahoo and Google don't get blocked very often, if at all.

BTW, in case you missed it, the expiration for the link is now 7 days, related to some of the reasons you mentioned.

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki

I appreciate the technical/political explanations of why Groups.io is getting pushed into doing this. It's a seriously rotten deal, and I hope other providers will not follow suit.

I'm not exactly writing Groups.io off as a result. I'm certainly not moving my groups. But for the type of groups I tend to take care of, with many people with disabilities and limited technical skills, it's something that will likely make me go elsewhere next time I need to start one.

I did contact the member, and I hope we haven't lost him. I will probably also write a general note about it to all my groups, to give members a heads up.

I think adding a note to contact the group owner, with email address included, in the 'you have been removed' message, in case the resubscribe link has expired, would be helpful. I've not seen the message the removed member gets, so I don't know if that's already included.

What if this happens to a moderator or owner of a group? Could an owner be removed without warning like this, and potentially lose access to their group?

Thanks much for the insights, everyone.

Isis

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:20 PM, isis feral wrote:

they may well miss the limited time offer to be added back to the group

I see how this could be a greater problem for your members than for many of us. To the experienced members here: What would a member have to do to get back in the group after the link expires? I'm thinking that this information could be added to GIO's "You have been removed..." message.

Pete

This has happened to a small percentage of my members and honestly it's not a big deal. The member gets an email notice with a link to resume their subscription, and it takes them one click to get back on. Only twice have members contacted me because they weren't sure what to do.

User education is important here. I've let people know how to deal with this and not one of my members has complained about it.

Pete

Shal,
i?m not quite sure any more now about the exact wording of the mails I received from the system at each stage of a member?s application. I just remember that someone was titled as "joined" although they had not even confirmed their mail address. My group was always restricted, so in this case there couln?t be a confusion between "applied" and "joined". But I will observe this now and copy each system mail I get in order to verify the sequences. If I realize some inconsistencies again, I will report.
--
Victoria

/g/hundevital

/g/siebenkatzenleben

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 12:45 AM, Maureen wrote:

Any recommendations??

Hi Maureen,

a recent change on Groups.io now allows you to upload links to files on other cloud storage platforms such as Dropbox and OneDrive etc.? Check out the options on the +New button in the files section of your group and maybe one of these will give you an alternative to YouTube.

The manual may also provide additional information: /helpcenter/membersmanual/1/working-with-files/uploading-files-and-folders

Andy

Isis . . .

(see below)

On Sun, 02 Aug 2020 19:18:27 -0700, "isis feral via groups.io"
<isisferal@...> wrote:

We have no control over what our email providers do. Almost every big email provider is on the list of providers where this can happen, except Gmail, so I guess lots of people might just decide to go with the evil Google to prevent this from happening.

This started happening a few years ago when email service providers
decided for us (without asking us) that to protect us from being stuck
as a member in a group and continuing getting undesired posts from
forums, that if we marked messages from those forums as spam they
would force the forums to either unsubscribe the member or blacklist
the forum platform. I agree that it's not a good setup but we're stuck
with it. It's easy enough to unsubscribe from a group from most
platforms by clicking on a link at the end of the email you receive,
so that scheme isn't really needed. But it's there and we have to deal
with it.

Spam filters are not uncontroversial in general. Personally I believe that we are entitled to receive all of our email, including spam, and to make decisions ourselves about what's spam and what isn't. But most email providers force spam folders on us.

Spectrum (Roadrunner email) has a setup that they give you 5 free
email addresses. They don't tell you that there even is a spam folder.
It's only accessible online on their web site.

I discovered this when I knew I should be getting certain emails from
companies and I wasn't seeing them. I contacted Time Warner (now
Spectrum) and learned about the spam folder, and lo and behold, there
were some of those emails (the ones that weren't deleted after 30
days). I was told I could choose a setting that I could have all
suspected spam to my inbox but label the suspected messages with
"SPAM:" at the beginning of the subject line. I think I also had the
option to just have it send all messages to my inbox, effectively
turning off the spam folder. I would rather make the decision whether
a certain message is spam or not since spam filters are notorious for
false positives, and if you don't even see the spam folder (like it
was in my case), you will lose messages you should have received.

So now Groups.io is forcing anyone this happens to to interact with this folder all the time to be allowed to receive Groups.io mail, and to do so in a short period of time that is not realistic for everyone.

The blame goes to the email services/providers, not GIO. GIO has to
obey or be blacklisted. The email services are the ones who sent out
the order to unsubscribe the member, so it's unfair to blame GIO for
this setup. I don't like it any more than you do but we're stuck with
it.

One bad thing is that some email interfaces make it too easy to delete
a message as spam by mistake. I am told by some of the members in my
groups that the Yahoo Mail phone app has the buttons very close
together and some claimed that was what happened to them.

And now as moderator, I'm going to have to follow up with the member who this happened to, for no fault of their own, and no fault of my own. More work, more hassle, and why - because we are being held accountable for what various corporate entities that provide us with our email accounts are doing.

You can choose to not follow through and trust the resubscribe link to
do its job when it's sent out with a brief explanation. Or you can
send a personal note with an explanation to the member if you want to.
You can also train your members (posting an explanation) to not delete
posts as spam, to check their spam folders, and what to do if they or
their email provider unsubscribes them by deleting a message as spam
or a message in the spam folder. But expect a discussion on the
subject and you'll have to deal with the lack of knowledge many
members have when they blame the forum providers instead of the real
culprits, the email providers who started this thing a few years back.
I had a monthly reminder in all my groups. In one high activity group
it was impossible to teach some that it wasn't the fault of GIO.

I'm extremely disappointed with Groups.io. I'm not going to move my groups elsewhere, but neither am I going to recommend others come here. I know there's nothing anyone here can do about it. I'm just venting, and hope that maybe Mark, or someone who communicates with Mark on a regular basis, takes notice that this is causing problems for some of us.

This isn't something Mark can do anything about, for the reason
mentioned above. The onus is on the email providers, and since they
started this, I doubt that they will reverse course. They think they
know you better than you do and that you need to be protected from
yourself. They know best, or they think they do.

I don't know how many email providers don't have this system in place
but I know Yahoo does. The best advice to give your members if you
choose to start a discussion on this topic in your group is to not
delete any desired email in the spam folder, to not mark a desired
message as spam in their inbox, to check their spam folder regularly,
and train the spam folder (mark a desired message as not spam) to
allow messages from GIO (they might call that whitelisting in their
email service setup).

You will probably see this sort of thing on other forums as time goes
on, as email providers start implementing this scheme for the smaller
forum platforms over time.

So while there's nothing we can do to get rid of this scheme, there
are things group members can do to not get caught in this trap. Some
may not be teachable or may have difficulty understanding this, and
other than reaching out personally to help them, there's not much else
you can do for those who can't learn.

Hopefully you won't have a member do this (or his/her email service
doing it automatically) very often. I had a few, though, who did it
repeatedly, two or three times in a row close together, until they
figured out what they were doing. But those are the exceptions. I
don't usually follow up anymore and almost all who are caught in that
trap click on the resubscribe link sent out by GIO from a different
address.

Donald


----------------------------------------------------
Some ham radio groups you may be interested in:
/g/ICOM /g/Ham-Antennas
/g/HamRadioHelp /g/Baofeng
/g/CHIRP

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 10:20 PM, isis feral wrote:

I'm extremely disappointed with Groups.io. I'm not going to move my groups elsewhere, but neither am I going to recommend others come here.

Isis -- Groups.io sends a lot of emails, and is registered with a "foreign" top-level domain. Thus, it already has two strikes against it, as far as the spam algorithms are concerned. Honoring email provider's feedback loop requests is the price groups.io has to pay to avoid getting that third strike.

Looking at your posting history, you've had at least one group since in April of 2019. I think writing off groups.io over something that has happened to you once in 15 months is a bit of an overreaction. An occasional hiccup of this nature is a small price to pay for access to an otherwise stable platform, run by someone who actually cares and responds to his clients. That's my opinion, anyway.

Regards,
Bruce

---

Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual

Thanks, Duane.

I wish I had known about this before I brought my groups here. Honestly, I would have gone elsewhere.

We have no control over what our email providers do. Almost every big email provider is on the list of providers where this can happen, except Gmail, so I guess lots of people might just decide to go with the evil Google to prevent this from happening. Not a good trajectory.

Spam filters are not uncontroversial in general. Personally I believe that we are entitled to receive all of our email, including spam, and to make decisions ourselves about what's spam and what isn't. But most email providers force spam folders on us.

So now Groups.io is forcing anyone this happens to to interact with this folder all the time to be allowed to receive Groups.io mail, and to do so in a short period of time that is not realistic for everyone. I don't think it's okay to expect users to monitor their emails in specific time frames. Some of the members in my groups are disabled, and some are homeless, and they don't go online every day or every week, and if they do, they focus on urgent emails (like from their community groups!) rather than some bureaucratic mailing, so they may well miss the limited time offer to be added back to the group.

And now as moderator, I'm going to have to follow up with the member who this happened to, for no fault of their own, and no fault of my own. More work, more hassle, and why - because we are being held accountable for what various corporate entities that provide us with our email accounts are doing.

I'm extremely disappointed with Groups.io. I'm not going to move my groups elsewhere, but neither am I going to recommend others come here. I know there's nothing anyone here can do about it. I'm just venting, and hope that maybe Mark, or someone who communicates with Mark on a regular basis, takes notice that this is causing problems for some of us.

Thanks for explaining what's going on, Duane.

Isis

On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 07:41 PM, isis feral wrote:

Is this some new policy?

No, it's been this way for a long time, at least 4 years.? There have been many discussions about it on this group.? You can read the official Help information at /helpcenter/faq/1/group-member-faq/q-i-got-a-message-that-i

Duane
--
The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center.
GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki