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Re: Online Safety Act (UK)
On Sat, Jan 18, 2025 at 09:28 AM, John Russell wrote:
there is a material risk of significant harm to such users.and this is what would need to be proved and what is classed as a 'material risk'. This kind of statement is always open to interpretation and debate and usually, the only winners are the lawyers. ?
If you read the Conditions of Use on the Groups.io Terms of Service you'll see that the type of material/activities this Act is supposed to be protecting people from is what Groups.io does not allow. In cases where people/groups have been reported for breaking these terms, then Mark has taken steps to ban them from the site.?
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The Act isn't aimed at individual groups, it's aimed at social media companies and search services (and the major ones at that). I doubt Groups.io could be classed as a major service and while it does have a search facility, it's only for content that's on the Groups.io site.
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The exemption for email/sms/mms services and content mentioned by Dave in #48618 also jumped out at me.? Groups.io is marketed as an email based service so whether you share night sky pictures or other content, you probably send and receive that by email.
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I think a whole bunch of people are getting worked up over nothing with this and I for one, would like to get back to discussing the features of Groups.io.
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Regards
Andy |
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Re: Online Safety Act (UK)
Apologies, I have just read the Explainer (), which is fairly short, and in the Section "Who the Act Applies to", it says "The Act applies to services even if the companies providing them are outside the UK should they have links to the UK. This includes if the service has a significant number of UK users, if the UK is a target market, or it is capable of being accessed by UK users and there is a material risk of significant harm to such users."
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So it's clear my group comes under the Act. As an unregistered, not-for profit, group, there is no revenue to take 10% of, as a fine, but I guess they could, in theory come after me in Austria. It would involve an extradition, not the easy to obtain EU arrest warrant., thanks to Brexit.
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Also, no-one in my group has come close to committing any of the offences covered by this Act, so I do not feel threatened :-
John Russell |
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Re: Is there a way to keep track of who is unsubscribed
#addmembers
#subscription
On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 12:19 PM, Sara Cormeny wrote:
Yeah, we have a similar problem. But trust me, if the system behaved otherwise, there would be plenty of people standing in line to complain about it ("I just had someone renew their membership but the system won't let me add them!")
You don't need a separate spreadsheet, just add a column with a flag for those who have left. Sort on that column and you can avoid trying to add them again.
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We had the same problem, and more. Our whole membership system seemed designed to make things as complicated as possible. Folks could join at any time, and your membership was good for a year, so we had to keep track of everyone's renewal date and - once a month - notify those who were expiring. We couldn't just do everyone at the same time. Further complicating things was that spouses had member status, could vote in elections, and participate the GIO group (with a separate email address, of course) without paying for a separate membership. So these spousal members had to be captured somehow too. I *hated* that, and at one time proposed a bylaws change to eliminate it, but several key people had their own axe to grind, and you can imagine how far it got.?
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We also had "Student" memberships, and on and on, but I'm straying further and further off-topic. Just be glad you don't have to deal with that other stuff, too. Or maybe you do have to deal with this other stuff...if so, you have all my sympathy. :)
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For what it's worth, here's what we eventually did:
1) Direct Add new members (and their spouse, as appropriate) as dues are paid.?
2) If anyone chooses to unsubscribe from the GIO group, just let them do it.
3) Whenever someone's paid membership in the parent organization lapses, give them a one-month grace period to renew.
4) If they still didn't pay after a month, remove them (and their spouse, as appropriate) from the group with a "Goodbye" member notice explaining why.
5) Once a year, audit the GIO Member List against the master membership spreadsheet.
? ?5a) If someone hadn't paid dues but somehow slipped through the cracks and were still in the group, remove them then.?
? ?5b) If someone had paid dues but wasn't in the GIO group, send them a carefully-worded?invitation. Most of the time, this would be ignored, but at least you're only bugging them once a year.
? ?5c) If a single member was subscribed to the group with more than one email address (it happens), kindly ask them to pick one.
? ?5d) Prepare an audit report explaining the findings and the actions taken for our board of directors.
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Yes, it was a lot of hassle, but the first audit was by far the worst. After that, having the previous year's report in hand was really helpful to sort out what was going on.
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Just letting things remain messy is of course also an option, but it goes against my sensibilities. I hope this helps, but it probably doesn't.?
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Regards,
Bruce
Check out the groups.io Help Center?and?groups.io Owners Manual |
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Re: Is there a way to keep track of who is unsubscribed
#addmembers
#subscription
I do not have access to the new members only list, or to a list with registration dates, only to the entire list of members. So sorry that was not as clear in my first message as it needed to be to generate an actionable suggestion, or one that wouldn't accuse me of creating more work.
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And I do not want to double check any list at any point, that's the point here.
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But, thanks for reading. |
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Re: Is there a way to keep track of who is unsubscribed
#addmembers
#subscription
On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 05:19 PM, Sara Cormeny wrote:
Periodically I update our groups.io member list by bulk-adding the entire list of emails of paid members to our organization, to our groups.io community. That's is a sensible way to make sure that new members and members who have used a new email when they re-upped their membership are added to the online community.I think you are creating more work for yourself than needed by adding an entire membership list each time. If you just add the new members then your problems goes away. If a member leaves and then tries to join again, you can check if they're on your full membership list or not and then approve/reject the subscription request as needed. ?
if you have a premium group, you can see previous members by filtering the member list to show past members but there's no facility to tag them and then stop them being added again via Direct Add.
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Regards
Andy |
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Re: Reverification Successful
On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 05:17 PM, Nichole Arp wrote:
I noticed a couple members have the "RS" by their names. From reading Groups.io help FAQs about Reverification, it looks like I don't need to worry about the RS being by their names.Correct. you can safely ignore the RS badge. Will the "RS"s go away eventually?I'm not aware of any plans to remove it. ?
Regards
Andy |
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Is there a way to keep track of who is unsubscribed
#addmembers
#subscription
Hi, I am the moderator for the groups.io community for a membership organization that has under 500 members. ?I appreciate so much about the functionality of groups.io but this one is stumping me.
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Periodically I update our groups.io member list by bulk-adding the entire list of emails of paid members to our organization, to our groups.io community. That's is a sensible way to make sure that new members and members who have used a new email when they re-upped their membership are added to the online community.
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Sometimes members choose to unsubscribe -- no problem, and my members are happy to use the automated "unsubscribe" link at the bottom of a message, that's fine. On other online communities where I've been a moderator, the system keeps track of people who have "unsubscribed" so that they cannot be re-added automatically by a moderator, but they can choose to re-subscribe themselves. Basically, their email addresses stay in the member database with an "unsubscribed" status.
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With groups.io, that doesn't seem to be the case -- if someone unsubscribes, their email address leaves the system. ?So, when I bulk-add the list of emails, they are resubscribed. ?Oops!
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I really, really don't want to have to keep my own separate spreadsheet of people who have unsubscribed, so that I can manually remove them from my bulk email list when I do additions. ?That seems like madness.
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Right now the only "solution" that looks at all viable to me is that if someone "unsubscribes", that I elect to send them an email saying, please let me re-subscribe you and set your account to receiving no emails, as that will have the same effect but protect both of us from annoyingly resubscribing them when I do my bulk updates.
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Does anybody else face this issue? Does anybody have another solution they are using or that they would propose, that involves as little ongoing manual maintenance on my part as possible? ?Thanks for advice. |
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Reverification Successful
I have a group that has not had any new posts (messages) for six months. Recently, the group has decided to be more active with posting. As a result, I've looked at the membership list to invite a few more members. While there, I noticed a couple members have the "RS" by their names. From reading Groups.io help FAQs about Reverification, it looks like I don't need to worry about the RS being by their names. Will the "RS"s go away eventually? |
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Re: Online Safety Act (UK)
On Fri, Jan 17, 2025 at 08:30 AM, Martin wrote:
My puzzle is whether Groups.io is responding on our behalf for discussion groups. I've started a so we can get the correct answer.? Because of the way the site is set up, I feel that each group should be responsible for their content.? For example, I'm sure your group has predominantly UK members.? However, even in this case, the ToS should cover any complaints anyone might have.
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Duane
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Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual. |
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Re: exporting data
On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 01:53 PM, Chris wrote:
there must logically be a topic table¡ªat least containing the topic nametopics have a number which forms part of the URL that you see in the address bar of your browser. For this topic on GMF it is 110644003. You can have multiple topics with the same subject. ?
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If you wish to only extract certain topics and their associates messages, you can look to use the /gettopic endpoint of the API.? You'd need to write your own code to do that though. The /gettopic endpoint will return the messages for a specific topic in a Message List Object. You'll need to parse that and look for individual message objects. The body element of each message object should contain the message text:
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Beyond that, you will also find an attachments element with details of any attachments the message has:
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As Duane said, it could take some work on your part!
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In a word, No.? Attachments are connected to messages so you need to get the message details as described above to get the download URL for each attachment.
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You can view a list of all the attachments for your messages though with links back to the individual messages. If you have a Premium group, then go to Admin > Preferences > $ Billing and use the View Attachments link. If you have a free group, then it's Admin > Preferences > + Upgrade.
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Regards
Andy
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Re: exporting data
On Thu, Jan 16, 2025 at 07:53 AM, Chris wrote:
Suggestions need to be made on the beta group in order for Groups.io management to see them. I think you need to try the export function to see what you actually get.? Attachments are NOT one of the options, but they're included with each message. ?
Duane
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Lots of detailed information can be found in the Owners Manual and Members Manual. |
Thomas Gruber
Andy Wedge
John Russell
Bruce Bowman
Sara Cormeny
Nichole Arp
Duane
Frances