Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 10:44 PM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
It does not compromise legality.?
?
For the third or fourth time in this discussion, I will say that the legally required material can be stated concisely in a footer that would always be present.
That may be your view but I'm guessing, as has also been stated before, that the current format has been reviewed by legal professionals which is why it is how it is. Regards Andy
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
It does not compromise legality.?
For the third or fourth time in this discussion, I will say that the legally required material can be stated concisely in a footer that would always be present.
That would permit the narrative to be expressed in the words of the Owner.
-P.
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 5:40?PM Chris Jones via <chrisjones12= [email protected]> wrote: On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 08:37 PM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
But I don't see why official?wording is needed at all, just as long as the required information is present. And as I said, all the officially required boilerplate could concisely be put in a required footer and the user's desired message could then replace the official text entirely.
It is needed because Mark Fletcher (who owns Groups.io) recognises that he has a legal responsibility to ensure that his Company observes the law; what you are asking for effectively strips him and Groups.io of that responsibility and delegates it to individual group owners who may (or may not) include that which is legally required into some messages. In his position I don 't think I would countenance any such delegation. What might or would happen if a group owner failed to incorporate material that is legally required??
Furthermore the "officially required boilerplate" is probably already as concise as the company's legal advisers will allow it to be, and burying it in a footer is simply not appropriate; "small print" has an unhappy reputation and putting it into a footer would effectively reduce it to the status of small print.?
I am very much with Greg D when he writes?I expect it's a matter of legal risk avoidance.? Depending on jurisdiction, Groups.io could be held responsible for the legal text, which they cannot control unless they force its inclusion.
Chris.?
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 08:37 PM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
But I don't see why official?wording is needed at all, just as long as the required information is present. And as I said, all the officially required boilerplate could concisely be put in a required footer and the user's desired message could then replace the official text entirely.
It is needed because Mark Fletcher (who owns Groups.io) recognises that he has a legal responsibility to ensure that his Company observes the law; what you are asking for effectively strips him and Groups.io of that responsibility and delegates it to individual group owners who may (or may not) include that which is legally required into some messages. In his position I don 't think I would countenance any such delegation. What might or would happen if a group owner failed to incorporate material that is legally required?? Furthermore the "officially required boilerplate" is probably already as concise as the company's legal advisers will allow it to be, and burying it in a footer is simply not appropriate; "small print" has an unhappy reputation and putting it into a footer would effectively reduce it to the status of small print.? I am very much with Greg D when he writes? I expect it's a matter of legal risk avoidance.? Depending on jurisdiction, Groups.io could be held responsible for the legal text, which they cannot control unless they force its inclusion.Chris.?
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
If the legally required information?is expressed concisely in a footer, similar (to but not exactly the same as) the footer that appears at the bottom of this message, then the narrative part could be anything the Owner wishes.
-P. -P.
I expect it's a matter of legal risk avoidance.? Depending on
jurisdiction, Groups.io could be held responsible for the legal text,
which they cannot control unless they force its inclusion. Alternatively
they could require a legal review of everyone's submitted text, which
would be cost prohibitive.? Yay, 21's century...
Forcing the specific legal text to be included in a footer or such
probably meets the requirement, so to me this would be a viable
alternative.? Probably a matter for discussion on the Beta forum.
Greg
Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
> But I don't see why official?wording is needed at all, just as long as
> the required information is present. And as I said, all the officially
> required boilerplate could concisely be put in a required footer and
> the user's desired message could then replace the official text entirely.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On 2023-06-13 13:41, Peter S.
Shenkin via groups.io wrote:
And
as I said, all the officially required boilerplate could
concisely be put in a required footer and the user's desired
message could then replace the official text entirely.
You can suggest changes or whatnot regarding this in the group, that's where
new features, bugs, changes, etc, are posted and discussed, and
where management reads and participates, GMF is a user-to-user
group.
But
I don't see why official?wording is needed at all . . .
It's called C.Y.A.
.
. . just as long as the required information is present.
Since you've done dev work in the past, you should know that this
would be very hard to code, i.e. to check if the way
some person phrased the required legalese text meets the legalese
requirements.? It would require some very advanced AI software and
even then there's no guarantee, anytime one gets into coding for
semantics it becomes very hard with a higher than usual failure
rate, not too mention that there's other languages besides English
and groups.io is working on supporting other languages as well, so
it would get really messy really quick.
Cheers,
Christos
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
I expect it's a matter of legal risk avoidance.? Depending on jurisdiction, Groups.io could be held responsible for the legal text, which they cannot control unless they force its inclusion. Alternatively they could require a legal review of everyone's submitted text, which would be cost prohibitive.? Yay, 21's century...
Forcing the specific legal text to be included in a footer or such probably meets the requirement, so to me this would be a viable alternative.? Probably a matter for discussion on the Beta forum.
Greg
Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
But I don't see why official?wording is needed at all, just as long as the required information is present. And as I said, all the officially required boilerplate could concisely be put in a required footer and the user's desired message could then replace the official text entirely.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
Right now, it is the middle of the official message, neither before nor after it.
But I don't see why official?wording is needed at all, just as long as the required information is present. And as I said, all the officially required boilerplate could concisely be put in a required footer and the user's desired message could then replace the official text entirely.
-P.
What I think would help is if the added message would appear above
the default text, not under it.? With our small-screen,
short-attention-span environment, the first impression is "What is
this stuff.? Swipe to trash...".? Putting our introduction first
should solve that.
Greg
Bruce Bowman wrote:
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 02:11 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
I followed
the instructions to create my own Direct Add message, but when
I do a Direct Add, the message I created?appears within the
default message. My own message is the italicized part of the
following. (I italicized that portion for this posting only.)?
For legal reasons, the Direct Add message must notify each
subscriber that they're now in your group and give them a chance
to opt out. Groups.io cannot assume you'll include such
information in your custom notice.
I expected
that my Direct Add message alone would appear when I do
a?Direct Add. How can I make that happen?
You can't. But you can make use of all the fonts, colors, and
other formatting features to make your inserted text stand out.
Regards,
Bruce
Check out the groups.io
Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 11:47 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
The documentation for formulating a Direct Add message does not state that the procedure described would not create a new message.
It states it quite clearly to me.
As I already stated, it would be quite?possible for to include this information concisely in a required footer while allowing the actual message to be whatever the owner wishes.
In order to even have a chance at a change, you'd have to request it on the since this is a peer-to-peer group not monitored by Groups.io management. Duane -- Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
I already said that I included all the information (as far?as I know) in my own message, which I expected would replace the officialese. There is nothing I saw in the documentation?that said that the procedure I followed would not work in the obvious way.
The documentation for formulating a Direct Add message does not state that the procedure described would not create a new message. As I already stated, it would be quite?possible for to include this information concisely in a required footer while allowing the actual message to be whatever the owner wishes.
And no, the Officialese does not have to be included at all. "Officialese" is a style of expression. What has to be included are certain?legal requirements which I stated fully (as far as I can see) in my own way.
You are quite right that I referred to the Welcome message in my original email. But I followed the instructions for creating my own Direct Add message, and again, there is nothing in those instructions to indicate that this procedure would not replace the existing Direct Add message.
I have already (above and earlier) suggested an improvement which would allow a full replacement to take place; namely, by concisely stating the bare minimum requirements concisely in a required?footer.
-P.
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 11:41?AM Duane < txpigeon@...> wrote: On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 10:31 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
rather?than embedding the group owner's original message in a morass of officialese
Based on most interpretations of worldwide law, the "officialese" has to come first so folks can easily leave if they want.? Of course, spammers don't pay any attention to minor things like laws.
Duane
--
Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
What I think would help is if the added message would appear above
the default text, not under it.? With our small-screen,
short-attention-span environment, the first impression is "What is
this stuff.? Swipe to trash...".? Putting our introduction first
should solve that.
Greg
Bruce Bowman wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 02:11 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
I followed
the instructions to create my own Direct Add message, but when
I do a Direct Add, the message I created?appears within the
default message. My own message is the italicized part of the
following. (I italicized that portion for this posting only.)?
For legal reasons, the Direct Add message must notify each
subscriber that they're now in your group and give them a chance
to opt out. Groups.io cannot assume you'll include such
information in your custom notice.
I expected
that my Direct Add message alone would appear when I do
a?Direct Add. How can I make that happen?
You can't. But you can make use of all the fonts, colors, and
other formatting features to make your inserted text stand out.
Regards,
Bruce
Check out the groups.io
Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
My group is not a discussion group. I have my group set to an announcement group with all new postings by me only and all responses to my postings to me only. This is appropriate for this situation. I have stated those things quite explicitly in my message.
I have been a member?of a number of discussion groups (yahoo, google, and ) over the years. I even wrote software to run such a group back in the?1980s. I'm an active member of a discussion group now and I like the way it works.?
A few people whom I have?added who have welcomed the?anouncements sent from my own email via bcc have actually been so turned off by the officialese Welcome and other messages that they have unsubscribed. In addition, several others have expressed their distress directly and I've had to soothe their concerns.
Though I appreciate your remarks, what you are suggesting is the opposite of what I am trying to do!
-P.
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 11:31?AM KATHLEEN DESMAISONS < radiantkd@...> wrote: Peter,
I have another suggestion for you. I think it might be a good idea to explain to your group what a list serve is and how it works. Many people ?who are unfamiliar with the ¡°every email goes to everyone process are horrified by the idea at first. If you explain that everyone learns from listening, they can get excited. Also if you take the time to explain logistics to new people they may be happier?
hope this helps
Kathleen
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 10:31 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
rather?than embedding the group owner's original message in a morass of officialese
Based on most interpretations of worldwide law, the "officialese" has to come first so folks can easily leave if they want.? Of course, spammers don't pay any attention to minor things like laws. Duane -- Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 10:31 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
I noted in my posting that the GMF welcome message does not include the boilerplate welcome
You're confusing two notices, Welcome and Direct Add.? Welcome is sent when someone joins your group on their own or you add them, Direct Add is only used when you add them.? There is a default Welcome created when you create a group, but can be modified, including deleting, to suit you. Duane -- Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
I might add that this entire problem could be finessed by concisely?adding the required information in a footer, rather?than embedding the group owner's original message in a morass of officialese.
?
-P.
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 11:17?AM Peter S. Shenkin < shenkin@...> wrote:
I did include the information you refer?to in my own Direct Add massage.
I noted in my posting that the GMF welcome message does not include the boilerplate welcome, and was told in a response to my posting that I could replace the boilerplate welcome with my own message, as GMF has done. I followed the link that was given to replace the boilerplate mention. There is no mention in the help documentation that this procedure would, to put it bluntly, not work.
?
Is there no workaround? How did GMF manage to replace the boilerplate welcome?
?
-P.?
[excess quote trimmed by moderator]
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
I did include the information you refer?to in my own Direct Add massage.
I noted in my posting that the GMF welcome message does not include the boilerplate welcome, and was told in a response to my posting that I could replace the boilerplate welcome with my own message, as GMF has done. I followed the link that was given to replace the boilerplate mention. There is no mention in the help documentation that this procedure would, to put it bluntly, not work.
Is there no workaround? How did GMF manage to replace the boilerplate welcome?
-P.?
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 02:11 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
I followed the instructions to create my own Direct Add message, but when I do a Direct Add, the message I created?appears within the default message. My own message is the italicized part of the following. (I italicized that portion for this posting only.)?
For legal reasons, the Direct Add message must notify each subscriber that they're now in your group and give them a chance to opt out. Groups.io cannot assume you'll include such information in your custom notice.
I expected that my Direct Add message alone would appear when I do a?Direct Add. How can I make that happen?
You can't. But you can make use of all the fonts, colors, and other formatting features to make your inserted text stand out.
Regards,
Bruce
Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
Peter,
I have another suggestion for you. I think it might be a good idea to explain to your group what a list serve is and how it works. Many people ?who are unfamiliar with the ¡°every email goes to everyone process are horrified by the idea at first. If you explain that everyone learns from listening, they can get excited. Also if you take the time to explain logistics to new people they may be happier?
hope this helps
Kathleen
|
Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
On Tue, Jun 13, 2023 at 02:11 AM, Peter S. Shenkin wrote:
I followed the instructions to create my own Direct Add message, but when I do a Direct Add, the message I created?appears within the default message. My own message is the italicized part of the following. (I italicized that portion for this posting only.)?
For legal reasons, the Direct Add message must notify each subscriber that they're now in your group and give them a chance to opt out. Groups.io cannot assume you'll include such information in your custom notice.
I expected that my Direct Add message alone would appear when I do a?Direct Add. How can I make that happen?
You can't. But you can make use of all the fonts, colors, and other formatting features to make your inserted text stand out. Regards, Bruce
Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
Just thought of that, it may had been the browser's autocomplete
feature messing this up somehow, I had this happen a few times in
other sites where I thought I had cleared the field using backspace
only for the same value to reappear.
In any case, all's well that ends well!
Cheers,
Christos
On 2023-06-12 18:02, Peter S. Shenkin
via groups.io wrote:
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
Hi,?
I had stated
that when I empty out the Subject Tag field and press Update
Group, the default tag reappears. Indeed, as several
suggested, I must have been doing something wrong, because
when I tried it again just now, that procedure did the Tag,
which was the desired result.?
I'm reporting this just for closure.?
-P.
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
Hi,?
I followed the instructions to create my own Direct Add message, but when I do a Direct Add, the message I created?appears within the default message. My own message is the italicized part of the following. (I italicized that portion for this posting only.)?
When I look at the Direct Add message I created in Admin > Settings > Member Notices > Direct Add, only the italicized part appears. But when I go to actually do a Direct Add, the message that is shown is the full text shown below.
I expected that my Direct Add message alone would appear when I do a?Direct Add.
How can I make that happen?
Thanks, -P. Hello [Name], You have been added by the Groups.io Team to?Peter Shenkin Gigs. You can visit your group, start reading messages and posting them here:?/g/peter-shenkin-gigs. If it's your first time logging in or you have forgotten your password, please use the "email me a link to login" button. The email for this group is: [email protected]. But most importantly, please add this email address to your safe sender list in your email client's contacts. If you find emails from this group landing in spam, promo, or social folders, please move those emails to your primary inbox so that you can train your email client to put them directly in your inbox. The Group moderators have included the following important message: Hi, This is Peter Shenkin. I have added you to the email notification list for my upcoming gigs. If you don't care to receive such notifications, just send an email to:?[email protected]. It can be an empty email. I promise not to be insulted if you unsubscribe.
I use this list to announce my forthcoming gigs. Any response you make to a message will go only to me. Also, I send announcements from the address "shenkin+music@...". if you wish to stay on the list, you should check occasionally for messages from that address in your spam folder and declare them "not spam", or move them to your inbox. You can also add that address to your address book, perhaps as an additional email address for me in your contacts. But many of you won't have to do that. Assuming you'd like to remain on the list, you can visit the group archive to see what you missed by going to the url:?/g/peter-shenkin-gigs.
You have control over how you'd like to receive announcements. You can change your settings at the site:?/g/peter-shenkin-gigs/editsub. For example, you can opt to receive: all messages in individual emails, collections of messages in a digest, a daily summary, or only special notices. Since I don't expect a huge amount of traffic on this list, I suspect that the default of individual emails will work well for most folks. You can also turn off email notifications while remaining a group member and turn them back on again later. The reason I adopted the rubric is because it makes an archive available to users and also provides a simple "unsubscribe" feature. And the handling of the membership list is done automatically. My previous method of copying and pasting a long list of users into the bcc: field of a personal outgoing email for each notification was time-consuming and error-prone.? I have tried to make emails from this list resemble, as closely as possible, the ones I used to send personally. If you have any questions or comments, feel free to write me at "shenkin+music@...". Best, -P. ? If this was a mistake, please click on the following link and you will be immediately removed: Unsubscribe The Groups.io Team
On Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 6:04?PM Peter S. Shenkin via <shenkin= [email protected]> wrote: Hi,?
I had stated that when I empty out the Subject Tag field and press Update Group, the default tag reappears. Indeed, as several suggested, I must have been doing something wrong, because when I tried it again just now, that procedure did the Tag, which was the desired result.?
I'm reporting this just for closure.?
-P.
On Wed, Jun 7, 2023 at 3:20?PM Peter S. Shenkin via <shenkin= [email protected]> wrote: I recently started a group ( [email protected]) to send announcements about my gigs to interested parties. It's a "premium" group to which I've added a bunch of my friends. Several have?opted out because the canned welcome notice and a few other things make?the announcement group?look and sound so much like some kind of social-media or formal work-related site. I've been at pains to explain to some of my friends that neither the case, but I'd not have had to do this if the welcome message and other features could have been personalized.? The way I had been sending notices out was to simply send them from my personal email, adding the long list of recipients to the bcc: field each time. This is laborious and error prone, so I liked the idea of because of easy unsubscription and maintenance. Based on changes that Mark was able to make (see my recent postings to the beta group), I now have my group behaving the same way as my emails in most or all essentials; viz.: - Only moderators and owners can post new topics.
- Regular users can respond to posted topics.
- Responses made to posted topics go directly to the author of the post.
So what's missing? The personal touch! - Custom welcome message. I see that GMF has one, but I didn't see any way I could create my own. Is there a way I can do this for?my?group?
- The language in the canned Welcome message is offputting for a group such as mine. Language like "You have been added by the?Groups.io?Team to?Peter Shenkin Gigs."?has the air of officialese, especially since approximately nobody who gets the welcome based on my "direct adds" is likely to have ever heard of , and as soon as they read it they think it is spam.
- I would instead replace the whole message with something that I have written myself, as myself, using language like "I have added you to this mailing list thinking you might be interested", and so on. After all, it's really I, not , who was responsible for adding the user.
- Be able to get rid of the tag. For my group, it?is totally unneeded. My group already sends out email as from "Peter Shenkin Music", so the tag is redundant.?
- I tried setting the tag to an empty field in Settings, but this just restored?the default [peter-shenkin-gigs] tag. I replaced it with "Peter Shenkin Music: ", which is more user friendly, but still redundant, because that information is already in the From: of the email, which is immediately?visible to the user.
- I've looked at what other musicians do in their gig announcements. None of them include a tag in the Subject:. All of them have sufficient identification in the From: address to avoid confusion.
- This one could be solved by simply?allowing an empty tag field to do what it says: eliminate the tag!?
None of the suggestions I am making would be appropriate for all groups; I am a member of a group where I find the tag inoffensive, but that group is a discussion group and people understand from the start that some 3rd-party infrastructure is involved.
I would like to make my group look and feel as personal as the emails I used to send out, and IMO, there ought to be a way to do that.
If anyone has workarounds for replacing the entire Welcome message with a personalized one or for eliminating the tag, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you,
-P.?
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Re: Allow groups.io messages to be more personal
Hi,?
I had stated that when I empty out the Subject Tag field and press Update Group, the default tag reappears. Indeed, as several suggested, I must have been doing something wrong, because when I tried it again just now, that procedure did the Tag, which was the desired result.?
I'm reporting this just for closure.?
-P.
On Wed, Jun 7, 2023 at 3:20?PM Peter S. Shenkin via <shenkin= [email protected]> wrote: I recently started a group ( [email protected]) to send announcements about my gigs to interested parties. It's a "premium" group to which I've added a bunch of my friends. Several have?opted out because the canned welcome notice and a few other things make?the announcement group?look and sound so much like some kind of social-media or formal work-related site. I've been at pains to explain to some of my friends that neither the case, but I'd not have had to do this if the welcome message and other features could have been personalized.? The way I had been sending notices out was to simply send them from my personal email, adding the long list of recipients to the bcc: field each time. This is laborious and error prone, so I liked the idea of because of easy unsubscription and maintenance. Based on changes that Mark was able to make (see my recent postings to the beta group), I now have my group behaving the same way as my emails in most or all essentials; viz.: - Only moderators and owners can post new topics.
- Regular users can respond to posted topics.
- Responses made to posted topics go directly to the author of the post.
So what's missing? The personal touch! - Custom welcome message. I see that GMF has one, but I didn't see any way I could create my own. Is there a way I can do this for?my?group?
- The language in the canned Welcome message is offputting for a group such as mine. Language like "You have been added by the?Groups.io?Team to?Peter Shenkin Gigs."?has the air of officialese, especially since approximately nobody who gets the welcome based on my "direct adds" is likely to have ever heard of , and as soon as they read it they think it is spam.
- I would instead replace the whole message with something that I have written myself, as myself, using language like "I have added you to this mailing list thinking you might be interested", and so on. After all, it's really I, not , who was responsible for adding the user.
- Be able to get rid of the tag. For my group, it?is totally unneeded. My group already sends out email as from "Peter Shenkin Music", so the tag is redundant.?
- I tried setting the tag to an empty field in Settings, but this just restored?the default [peter-shenkin-gigs] tag. I replaced it with "Peter Shenkin Music: ", which is more user friendly, but still redundant, because that information is already in the From: of the email, which is immediately?visible to the user.
- I've looked at what other musicians do in their gig announcements. None of them include a tag in the Subject:. All of them have sufficient identification in the From: address to avoid confusion.
- This one could be solved by simply?allowing an empty tag field to do what it says: eliminate the tag!?
None of the suggestions I am making would be appropriate for all groups; I am a member of a group where I find the tag inoffensive, but that group is a discussion group and people understand from the start that some 3rd-party infrastructure is involved.
I would like to make my group look and feel as personal as the emails I used to send out, and IMO, there ought to be a way to do that.
If anyone has workarounds for replacing the entire Welcome message with a personalized one or for eliminating the tag, I'd appreciate it.
Thank you,
-P.?
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Andy Wedge
Peter S. Shenkin
Christos Psarras
Duane
KATHLEEN DESMAISONS
Bruce