Keyboard Shortcuts
ctrl + shift + ? :
Show all keyboard shortcuts
ctrl + g :
Navigate to a group
ctrl + shift + f :
Find
ctrl + / :
Quick actions
esc to dismiss
Likes
- GroupManagersForum
- Messages
Search
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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. |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:13 AM, Ilana DeBare wrote:
it sounds like I should do two things for spam prevention: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 |
Re: Wanting to convert from Yahoogroups to Groups.io.
On Mon, Aug 3, 2020 at 10:21 AM, michael zaken wrote:
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 |
Wanting to convert from Yahoogroups to Groups.io.
michael zaken
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. Thanks for any help. ? MZ ? [Antivirus ad trimmed by Moderator] |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 groupI 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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: why are membership applicants called "member" before even admitted?
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 |
Re: Zoom mp4 files
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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. 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. 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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
Re: member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
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 |
member unsubscribed for 'marking a message as spam'?
I got a strange message from Groups.io today, that a member of one of my groups was removed. The subject line of the message says: "Subscriber was removed for marking a message as spam" The text of the message says: "This is to notify you that [member's email address] has been unsubscribed from your group [group address]
because
message [message link] was marked as spam. Note that this may have been done by their email service provider, not by the
individual member personally. They've been given a link that lets them quickly resubscribe, in case this was an error." I find this message rather incomprehensible. The message at the link provided was posted by a totally different member, and was posted to the group without interference. So why would a member be removed for marking someone else's message as spam, which could happen by accident, or as the message says, it could have been their service provider? Is this some new policy? If so, I'm not happy at all. If a service provider does something that Groups.io doesn't like, then why punish the member who is not responsible for what their service provider does? Why make them jump through hoops to resubscribe to a list that they already chose to subscribe to, just because of some button click that may have been accidental, or done by someone else entirely? They may not even notice an email warning them that they've been unsubscribed because it looks like spam! And why no warning that such a policy is being implemented? I've never seen anything like this on this platform, or any other platform I've managed lists on. Could someone please explain what this is about? Thank you. Isis |
Re: I am the group owner but do not see messages I post
On Sun, Aug 2, 2020 at 07:03 PM, Monica Utsey wrote:
I don¡¯t read code or whatever it is so there was no way for me to know thisIn general, if the code is 2.x.x, the email was accepted by the email service for delivery to the intended email address.? For a 4.x.x code, the service temporarily won't accept it, but GIO will try again later for these (and keep trying if 4.x.x is returned again.)? For 5.x.x, the email service has refused to accept the email for some reason and GIO won't send it again. Those are SMTP codes that all email services use when communicating with each other, such as GIO to msn (messages to you) or msn to GIO (messages from you).? Good information at ? Various services use slightly different English language definitions for some of the codes, but they mean the same thing. Duane -- The official Groups.io user documentation is in the Groups.io Help Center. GMF's Unofficial Help Wiki: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki |
Re: Photos and attachments
?Shal Farley wrote: This is kind of an odd theory, and I've not tested it, but the only difference I'm seeing between what does not display right in GMF, and what does in shalstest, is the file name. In particular, the one in GMF included an en-dash character.
===================================================================================================== It's funny, but I had the same thought. When I have time tomorrow I'll test it. I think you might be right. tommy0421 |
Re: Photos and attachments
tommy0421,
Shal I am going to copy the images from the member's original sourceAmusingly, it did. More below. When I report this in Beta should I send the image or just the errorIn beta you should post a link to example messages in your group(s), and/or the one in GMF. That will let Mark see the effect for himself and examine the message and its headers for clues. ----- This is kind of an odd theory, and I've not tested it, but the only difference I'm seeing between what does not display right in GMF, and what does in shalstest, is the file name. In particular, the one in GMF included an en-dash character. From the view source of your message at GMF, the image file header says: Content-Type: image/jpeg; name="SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS ¨C SUNDAY, 18 March1917.jpg" Content-Disposition: inline; filename="SAN ANTONIO, TEXAS ¨C SUNDAY,18 March 1917.jpg" That character after "TEXAS" is not an ordinary hyphen. It is an en-dash character and in the filename text was represented in UTF-8 as the sequence ?€¡° (0xE2 80 93) - the Unicode code point 0x2013, which displays as an en-dash. I'm not sure what the email standard says about using UTF-8 encoding in header fields, but the standard has been evolving to allow UTF-8 in more places. Maybe whatever code is in Groups.io's message display processing isn't handling UTF-8 encoding correctly, causing it to fail when attempting to access the image. So if you're up for further tests, try ensuring that the file names do not contain any "fancy" punctuation -- nothing outside of the "plain" ASCII punctuation marks. That can be a little tricky when copying things from (especially Word) documents, as documents tend to use "fancy" characters ¡ª like em-dash, en-dash, and left and right ¡°quotation¡± marks; often automatically converting "plain" marks to "fancy" as you type. Shal -- Help: /helpcenter More Help: /g/GroupManagersForum/wiki Even More Help: Search button at the top of Messages list |
to navigate to use esc to dismiss